The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy
by Mina Loy
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There was a time when it was common to couple Mina Loy's name with that of W.C. Williams or Marianne Moore: her advanced contemporaries considered her a literary and artistic genius - a descendant of Sappho by way of Emily Dickinson. But the public was scandalized by her work, and some critics openly scorned it. Not only were her Futurist-inspired techniques unlike anything most readers had encountered before, but her subjects - procreation, parturition, prostitution, suicide, addiction, show more retardation - were considered shocking even by some modernists. Mina Loy vanished from the literary scene just as dramatically as she arrived on it, and for most of the century her bold experiments have remained a well-kept secret. But in recent years Loy's work has been discovered by a new generation of poets and critics, and has begun to surface in revisionist anthologies. What has been needed is a reliable text of the essential Loy poems. To assemble The Lost Lunar Baedeker, Roger Conover has rescued Loy's poems and prose works from the Dada magazines and other ephemeral publications where they first appeared. All of Loy's notorious Futurist and feminist satires are included, as are many poems from her Paris and New York periods, the complete cycle of "Love Songs," and several previously unknown texts. Detailed notes accompany the text. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
4.5/5
I want someone with the tendency to obsess over Modernism and Futuruism and other Patriarchal Eurocentric Difficult Things (I know you're out there) to pore over this with a fine-tooth comb. I know I missed the most of it, what with not being fluent in French/German/Italian/smattering of Spanish and all the requisite references, but what I did manage to get is simply extraordinary. There's also the Latin business, but let's work our way up, shall we?
Most of what I got went along the lines of sex and censor and the matter of thought not fitting into body into box. History talks about First Wave Feminism and its complacency with legality, a nice and neatness that would work if Loy hadn't been rocking around Second Wave (right to fuck) and Third Wave (right to not be white/rich/straight/cis) with her poems on childbirth and
and likely the only reason she and they survived is due to her not making a ruckus in the society spreadsheet of the time and drawing as much attention as the rest, aka
but of course must one keep in mind that she spent a good portion of that talked-about time unmarried and taking care of her child. Which meant money, which meant reputation, which meant her not only seeing everything in terms of sex but writing about it in as esoterically linguistic a manner as possible just wouldn't do while she was a woman if she wanted to eat.
As you can see, it didn't stop her from publishing every so often, drawing enough attention and the rare combo of literary editor and rabid fan to bring her work into the new millenium. I question the "new", really, for her life will still attract the "whore" and "slut" and every other word the gynephobic use when especially afraid of women embracing their sex drive. You are not free to malign such a phenomenal spirit in such a way, but if you wish to say as such while fucking a pinecone, be my guest.
She hung out with Stein and Barnes and this Nancy Cunard person whom I'd kick myself for not hearing about sooner except for, well, she's exactly the type to be buried in the chronicles posthaste.
Seriously, Modernist Extraordinare. She wrote a poem about [Ulysses]. Go forth. show less
[…]
The smell of small cooking
From luckier houses
Is cruel to the maimed cat
Hiding
Among the carpenter’s shavings
From three boys
—One holding a bar—
Who nevertheless
Born of human parents
Cry when locked in the dark
[…]
-Italian Pictures: The Costa San Giorgio
I want someone with the tendency to obsess over Modernism and Futuruism and other Patriarchal Eurocentric Difficult Things (I know you're out there) to pore over this with a fine-tooth comb. I know I missed the most of it, what with not being fluent in French/German/Italian/smattering of Spanish and all the requisite references, but what I did manage to get is simply extraordinary. There's also the Latin business, but let's work our way up, shall we?
[…]show more
Defiance of old
idolatries
inspires new schools
[…]
-Lions’ Jaws
Most of what I got went along the lines of sex and censor and the matter of thought not fitting into body into box. History talks about First Wave Feminism and its complacency with legality, a nice and neatness that would work if Loy hadn't been rocking around Second Wave (right to fuck) and Third Wave (right to not be white/rich/straight/cis) with her poems on childbirth and
[…]
And I who am called heretic,
and the only follower in Christ’s foot-steps
among this crowd adoring a wax doll
—for I alone am worshipping the poor
sore baby-the child of sex igno-
rance and poverty.
[…]
-The Prototype
and likely the only reason she and they survived is due to her not making a ruckus in the society spreadsheet of the time and drawing as much attention as the rest, aka
“One wonders what the devil anyone will make of this sort of thing who hasn’t all the clues….I am aware that the poems before me would drive numerous not wholly unintelligent readers into a fury of rage-out-of-puzzlement.”
-Ezra Pound, The Little Review 4:11 (March 1918, pp. 56-58)
but of course must one keep in mind that she spent a good portion of that talked-about time unmarried and taking care of her child. Which meant money, which meant reputation, which meant her not only seeing everything in terms of sex but writing about it in as esoterically linguistic a manner as possible just wouldn't do while she was a woman if she wanted to eat.
[…]
Is it true
That I have set you apart
Inviolate in an utter crystallization
Of all the jolting of the crowd
Taught me willingly to live to share
Or are you
Only the other half
Of an ego’s necessity
Scourging pride with compassion
To the shallow sound of dissonance
And boom of escaping breath
[…]
-Songs to Joannes
As you can see, it didn't stop her from publishing every so often, drawing enough attention and the rare combo of literary editor and rabid fan to bring her work into the new millenium. I question the "new", really, for her life will still attract the "whore" and "slut" and every other word the gynephobic use when especially afraid of women embracing their sex drive. You are not free to malign such a phenomenal spirit in such a way, but if you wish to say as such while fucking a pinecone, be my guest.
[…]
You may give birth to us
or marry us
the chances of your flesh
are not our destiny—
The cuirass of the soul
still chines—
And we are unaware
if you confuse
such brief
corrosion with possession
[…]
-Apology of Genius
She hung out with Stein and Barnes and this Nancy Cunard person whom I'd kick myself for not hearing about sooner except for, well, she's exactly the type to be buried in the chronicles posthaste.
[…]
The impartiality of the absolute
Routes the polemic
Or which of us
Would not
Receiving the holy-ghost
Catch it and caging
Lose it
Or in the problematic
Destroy the Universe
With a solution.
-Human Cylinders
Seriously, Modernist Extraordinare. She wrote a poem about [Ulysses]. Go forth. show less
Mentioned in The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women by Harriet Rubin.
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- Original publication date
- 1996
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