Again let me do a lot of extraordinary talking.
Again let me do a lot!
Let me abound in speeches - let me abound! - publicly polyglot!
Better a blind word to bluster with - better a bad word than none lieber Gott!
Watch me push into my witch's vortex all the Englishman's got
To cackle and rattle with - you catch my intention?

                                        from 'The Song of the Militant Romance'

At the beginning of his career Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) wrote vigorous poetry, and plays which in their form and vehement characterisation resemble the later work of Samuel Beckett. This volume includes major works: One-Way Song, and Enemy of the Stars in its two very different versions, as well as other writings that can now be seen as central to the formation of Lewis's work.

The plays and poems crackle with ferocious energy, concentrated and brilliant, as Lewis creates a literary equivalent to the visual revolutions of Cubism and Vorticism. He explores how an artist should think and write in an oppressive world, the relationship between imagination and action.

This edition, with Alan Munton's annotations, is a definitive text based on Lewis's own final corrections. An introduction by C.H. Sisson places these radical works in the context of Lewis's other writings.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction - C.H.Sisson



POEMS

Grignolles

On-Way Song

   Engine Fight-Talk

   The Song of the Militant Romance

   If So the Man You Are

   On-Way Song

   Envoi



PLAYS

Enemy of the Stars (1914)

The Ideal Giant

Enemy of the Stars (1932)

Physics of the Not-Self



APPENDIX: UNPUBLISHED POEMS AND FRAGMENTS

'The Liquid brown detestable earth'

'The life of memory concerned me next'



Explanatory Notes

Textual and Bibliographical NOtes

Bibliography



ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover of One-Way Song 1933

Title page of One-Way Song 1933

Design for 'Engine Fight-Talk'

The Schoolmaster

Design for 'The Song of the Militant Romance'

The Duc de Joyeux Sings

Design for 'If So the Man You Are'

Telegram from One-Way Song

Design for 'One-Way Song'

One-Way Figure

Prelimary from Blast 1

'Advertisement' from Blast 1

Cover Design for 'The Ideal Giant' 1917

Title page of Enemy of the Stars

The Play

Two figures and a star

Title page of 'Physics of the Not-Self', 1932