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GENERATIONS NO CREDIT By: Kenneth Fearing July 24, 2026 A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the
Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension,
Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic
awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn;
thematic index here. Arthur Dove’s “Red Sun” (1935) Whether dinner was pleasant, with the
windows lit by gunfire, and no one disagreed; or whether,
later, we argued in the park, and there was a touch of
vomit-gas in the evening air; whether we found a greater, deeper,
more perfect love, by courtesy of Camels, over NBC; whether
the comics amused us, or the newspapers carried a hunger
death, and published a whitehouse prayer for mother’s day; whether the
bills were paid or not, whether or not we had our doubts,
whether we spoke our minds at Joe’s, and the receipt
said “Not Redeemable,” and the cash register rang up “No Sale,”
whether the truth was then, or later, or whether the best had already gone —
Nevertheless, we know; as every turn is measured; as every unavoidable risk is
known; as nevertheless, the flesh grows old, dies,
dies in its only life, is gone; the reflection goes from the mirror; as the
shadow, of even a Communist, is gone from the wall;
as nevertheless, the current is thrown and the wheels revolve; and
nevertheless, as the word is spoken and the wheat grows tall
and the ships sail on — None but the fool is paid in full; none but the broker, none but
the scab is certain of profit; the sheriff alone may attend a third
degree in formal attire; alone, the academy artists multiply
in dignity as a trooper’s bayonet guards the door; only Steve, the
side-show robot, knows content; only Steve, the mechanical man
in love with a photo-electric beam, remains aloof; only
Steve, who sits and smokes or stands in salute, is secure; Steve, whose shoebutton eyes
are blind to terror, whose painted ears are deaf to appeal,
whose welded breast will never be slashed by bullets, whose armature
soul can hold no fear. — Found in Fearing’s 1935 collection Poems. “No
Credit” was first published in the September-October 1934 issue of the Partisan Review. In Mark Steven’s Red
Modernism (2017), we read that Kenneth Fearing was one of the few poets of the era who wrote about “the violent
antagonism with which communism and communists were met when capital retaliated against labor.” This poem, which
has been described as “Marxist noir,” correlates communist commitment with mortal imperilment. In
Steven’s reading of this poem: The repeated word “nevertheless” maintains the fatalism that introduces
each of these four overlapping vignettes. Taken as a whole, these lines depict the experience of capitalism in 1930s
America. From the perspective of labor, “every turn is measured” and “every unavoidable risk is
known,” and there is no alternative to the economically circumscribed cycle of exploitation, depredation, and
death. It is a situation from which the spectral figure of the communist — here, a proper noun — has abruptly and
mysteriously “gone,” as though to emphasize the structural foreclosure of anything antithetical to the iron
law of the market. In the absence of communism, capital continues to produce and circulate its commodities: “the
wheat grows tall and the ships sail on.” These are granted more vitality than the dying flesh that surrounds them,
whose subsistence (“only life”) has been relegated to a mere supporting role for the market. The
technological metaphor, “the current is thrown,” not only gives expression to the mechanized sphere of
production and circulation but also conjures up a specific event in the cultural history of the Popular Front that feeds
into the already chilling intensity of these lines. It is, of course, an allusion to Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, two left-wing radicals who were unjustly executed in 1927, despite mass protests led by communists. PS:
Fearing’s 1942 pulp novel Clark Gifford’s Body, which gravely and literately portrays a near-future US civil
war, is science fiction. *** 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
More By This Author NO CREDIT See All Posts by Kenneth Fearing About the Author Kenneth Fearing (1902–1961) was an
American poet and novelist. His Depression-era poetry belongs to the American proletarian poetry movement; his "demotic,
chatty, antic, digressive style" (as one critic puts it) was an influence on Allen Ginsberg and the Beats. He supported
himself by writing pulp fiction, often under pseudonyms. His most famous novel is "The Big Clock" (1946). COPYRIGHT
2009–2026 HILOBROW