bleeding hemlines & drinking as if to cleanse her soul: on Mina Loy
How have I come so far without having read Mina Loy?? It is utterly ridiculous. She cuts & I am glad for a little bleeding now and then.
My first reading of the week was the Pound essay comparing Mina Loy with Marianne Moore. Being familiar with Moore (and, honestly, being generally disinterested in her as well) I was in furious anticipation to read Loy seeing that Pound felt they were so different. Yay. Give Moore a small chisel, Mina (the little sex kitten, or should I just resort to calling her Minx) a stabbing ice pick, crushing the block to mix her drink. I can only hope she makes me one too.
I Y Lunar Baedeker. (And I had no idea what a Baedeker was). In the first stanza I was caught offguard, a 20’s woman with the balls to write about cocaine? Have men even had the guts to talk about coke yet? A silver Lucifer? A mirror. Lucifer/Narcissus. The entire thing reads to me much like howl. (a long time favorite). I don’t know the history, but I can’t imagine that Ginsberg could have written it without having read this.
I agree with those who say her alliteration can go overboard, but here it’s used beautifully: NOCTURNAL CYCLOPS CRYSTAL CONCUBINE. Rock on woman. The veil of night, darkness, deformity, beauty, drugs, sex, control, animalistic, beastly. In just four words. Condensare. At its most brutal & beautiful.
And the sound-i-ness of it: eye-white, sky-light \ white-light district. Yes, yes just for the sound of it, but I don’t totally buy it. Sure, she’s soundy, but I also take her comment as half-hearted sarcasm, because she knows damn well what she’s doing. eye-white as is bug-eyed as in up all night as in cocaine. the white-light district as in the sexuality of it, but by giving it a white light she decriminalizes the scene (white as opposed to red, obviously). This being in line with her blatant feminism. Also echoed in the last stanza, “fossil virgin,” virginity being an archaic ideal, going back to the “Immortality” of the 3rd to last stanza…in at least 2 ways. One: must be dead to be a fossil, virginity brings death, not immortality. The virgin is not immortal b/c they do not live on vicariously in their (lack of) offspring, are sexually dead/sexually void.
(Being the first week of reading 2 poets I don't know if I am supposed to write about both poets, or just write something. If I need to I'll write on Moore later).
My first reading of the week was the Pound essay comparing Mina Loy with Marianne Moore. Being familiar with Moore (and, honestly, being generally disinterested in her as well) I was in furious anticipation to read Loy seeing that Pound felt they were so different. Yay. Give Moore a small chisel, Mina (the little sex kitten, or should I just resort to calling her Minx) a stabbing ice pick, crushing the block to mix her drink. I can only hope she makes me one too.
I Y Lunar Baedeker. (And I had no idea what a Baedeker was). In the first stanza I was caught offguard, a 20’s woman with the balls to write about cocaine? Have men even had the guts to talk about coke yet? A silver Lucifer? A mirror. Lucifer/Narcissus. The entire thing reads to me much like howl. (a long time favorite). I don’t know the history, but I can’t imagine that Ginsberg could have written it without having read this.
I agree with those who say her alliteration can go overboard, but here it’s used beautifully: NOCTURNAL CYCLOPS CRYSTAL CONCUBINE. Rock on woman. The veil of night, darkness, deformity, beauty, drugs, sex, control, animalistic, beastly. In just four words. Condensare. At its most brutal & beautiful.
And the sound-i-ness of it: eye-white, sky-light \ white-light district. Yes, yes just for the sound of it, but I don’t totally buy it. Sure, she’s soundy, but I also take her comment as half-hearted sarcasm, because she knows damn well what she’s doing. eye-white as is bug-eyed as in up all night as in cocaine. the white-light district as in the sexuality of it, but by giving it a white light she decriminalizes the scene (white as opposed to red, obviously). This being in line with her blatant feminism. Also echoed in the last stanza, “fossil virgin,” virginity being an archaic ideal, going back to the “Immortality” of the 3rd to last stanza…in at least 2 ways. One: must be dead to be a fossil, virginity brings death, not immortality. The virgin is not immortal b/c they do not live on vicariously in their (lack of) offspring, are sexually dead/sexually void.
(Being the first week of reading 2 poets I don't know if I am supposed to write about both poets, or just write something. If I need to I'll write on Moore later).
posted by Sean & Jennifer at 22:51
3 Comments:
Hi Jennifer,
I loved this post! It did my heart good, b/c I've spent all week thinking Loy was a bust, and wondering what I could have done to spice up our discussion about her. I mean, not that there's not more I could have done, but ... well, between this post and Jeffrey's it's good to know she was worth the exposure.
No need to write on both poets: just tackle Moore if the mood strikes you. We'll return to her a little on Tuesday by way of setting up Stevens, who has a similar eccentric position in the roster of Mod Am Pos.
Thanks for sharing this link
Rodney, I loved her, and am reading furiously this weekend with the thought of actually switching my paper topic to discuss Loy & Futurism w/perhaps a little Ginsberg. Really, I am GLAD she was included. Thanks.
Hi Jennifer,
Great to know!
I wonder if this book by Charles Altieri might be helpful for your paper, if you decide to go in the "poets among the painters" direction:
Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism (Cambridge UP, 1989)
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