Epic Poem

UNTITLED EPIC POEM ON THE HISTORY OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

Buckminster Fuller

New York, 1962.


This is an epic poem in a decidedly unlovely prose style, doomed to be so, no doubt, by the facts, figures and terminology of its subject matter. The free verse format performs the familiar role for Fuller of measuring out his discourse in digestible gobbets.

Nevertheless, there are passages of bright writing that illuminate the journey:


Industrialization is the first religion
that is realistically universal.

(p.178)

And so Industrialization grew
uniquely
as the mutual mechanical scientific extension,
comprising precision controls
of energy and time.

And by Industrialization
and its mechanical extension
you and I are both
mutually and at the same time
New York,
Grand Coulee Dam,
The T.V.A., the Washington
The New York Central,
and the Santa Fe,
Route U.S.A 1, from Maine to Key West,
the stratosphere liners, -
they are our mutual
all-age, all-sex,
all-race
flesh and blood extensions.
They are us
we are they
and those who destroy them
or falsely employ them
are our enemies
and the enemy of our God
of the quick, -
they who destroy
are the proponents
of friction, freezing,
inertia and death.

(pp.112-113)

Fuller's Poetry



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