DISTANCES

By: William Stanley Braithwaite
April 10, 2024

A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.

Wenzel Hablik’s “Starry Sky, Attempt” (1909)

Just where that star above
Shines with a cold, dispassionate smile —
If in the flesh I’d travel there,
How many, many a mile!
If this, my soul, should be
Unprisoned from its earthly bond,
Time could not count its markless flight
Beyond that star, beyond!

— From Lyrics of Love and Life (1904). See African American Poetry (1870-1926), a digital anthology by Amardeep Singh.

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RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.

Categories

Poetry, Radium Age SF

Tags

radium-context, radium-poem

See All Posts by William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962) was a leading light in American literature in the early 20th century. As one of the very few Black critics employed as a regular columnist and reviewer for a mainstream newspaper in the 1910s and 20s, Braithwaite had outsized importance as a literary critic in his day. He wrote regularly for the Boston Evening Transcript between 1905 and 1931, and his positive reviews were eagerly sought by then-aspiring peers like Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, or Amy Lowell. Between 1913 and 1929, Braithwaite edited a series of poetry anthologies called the Anthology of Magazine Verse. Braithwaite also published two books of poetry in his own right.