Mina Loy

Mina Loy As a writer in the 1930s, Mina Loy was a woman of many words. Though she was not well known among poets in her time, she did contribute strong works of poetry that got her noticed. One of Loy's most prominent works was “Love Song”, a poem that distinguished the biological from the romantic, and the physical from the metaphysical. This poem was influenced by Mina’s past, leading to her use skillful but disturbing language and her great usage of syntax. These three come together to help the reader fully understand the hidden meaning of her words.
Mina was born as Mina Gertrude Lowy on December 27, 1882 in London. Her father was a Hungarian Jew while her mother was an English Protestant. Mina’s favorite hobby was art and so she studied painting in Munich for two years. After that she moved around a lot to such places as England, Paris, Florence, even to Greenwich Village and then returning to Paris. All of these experiences allowed her to be influenced by the style and culture of the age. She was exposed to a variety of unique styles such as Victorian, impressionism, futurism, and bohemian ways of painting making it difficult for her to actually stick to one artistic category. While studying in London she met pupil Stephen Haweis. They moved to Paris together and were wed there. Mina did not take Stephen’s last name but instead changed it from “Lowy,” to “Loy.” This showed her feminist side, giving her the power to choose her name and showed her independence. She had her first child Oda in May 1904, but the little girl past away on her first birthday. Mina and Stephen moved back to Florence and had two more children, but by that time their marriage was deteriorating. In ten years they would both living separate lives. She continued to write and paint (Goody).
It can be said that Mina Loy was an exceptional painter, poet and feminist. In 1916 she left her children in the care of their nurse and went to New York. There she met Arthur Cravan, this man was known as the “poet-boxer,” a fugitive and forger who had avoided the authorities for two years. Sadly, she and he only had six months together before he had to escape the country to avoid being drafted into the military. Later on they married in Mexico City and traveled around there while her children remained in Florence being raised by their nurse. At this point the reader can conclude that she was probably not the best motherly figure. She became pregnant once again and was set to meet Cravan in Buenos Aires. They planned to travel together from there, but he never appeared. Alone she returned to her family. She tried to return to her old calm lifestyle, but the disappearance of Cravan plagued her. Once again she left her children to go search for him or at least his body, but to no avail. Mina died as a recluse at age 84 with a half written bibliography and unpublished poems. (Hanscombe.) (Baym.)
Influenced by Impressionism, Mina was more of an artist than a poet. She spent countless hours painting and drawing, and at the end of her life she still claimed that she "never was a poet." History tends to disagree with her, because today her poems are still circulating around the world. Her poetry is being taught in schools and almost anywhere in the world readers are able to find some copy of her work. Marjorie Perloff wrote, “Among the great modernist poets, Mina Loy was surely the greatest wit, the most sophisticated commentator on the vagaries of love, the one whose brittle and sardonic laughter continues to pursue us.” (Hanscombe).
Mina once said, "My conceptions of life evolved while . . . stirring baby food on spirit lamps-- and my best drawings behind a stove to the accompaniment of a line of children's clothes hanging round it to dry" (Goody.) Her inspiration was her children and the love she experienced throughout her lifetime. Mina attempted to mix art and life together as one. Her first published work was in the magazine Camera Work and Trend. It was later on that “Love Songs” was published the magazine Others that caused quite the scandal (AAP.) Mina Loy had a unique way of putting words on paper. She did not write ordinary poems; the reader had to read between the lines to really understand the complexity of her mind. Although good, they were also quite disturbing. One such poet Amy Lowell was so disturbed by “Love Songs,” that she refused to publish any more of her own works in Others magazine (AAP). Lowell was not the only one that harbored these feelings. Other conservative poets felt the same way.
Loy’s main work “Love Songs” shows that romantic love is not real and debased it to the unromantic reality of sex (Goody). She emphasized the actuality of the actions happening and showed that cupid was nothing more than a “rooting hog.” Source Alex Goody adds “The offspring of the fantasy of love relies upon the debris of his hackneyed origins for his existence: “erotic garbage” (Goody). Mina Loy also uses many strange analogies to compare; such as pig cupid, erotic garbage, trickle of saliva, and virginal to the bellows (Bildir). In short everything that one would find romantic and beautiful she distorts into the harsh truth it is, whether it is beautiful or not. Her vocabulary is distinguished for the reference to body parts and actions. She mixes languages of writing, some examples being abstract and concrete (Lyon). The poem does not use the usual romantic language which is necessary for the myth of romance. All of the words represent the actuality of love and hold an in depth meaning of their own. “Virginal to the bellows of experience” shows the Victorian angel- woman in which could be said would be chaste (Pietroiusti). Every part of her body is separate from the whole. As source Peter Quartermain said, “Love doesn’t bring sexual equality nor even simple satisfactions, instead it brings out ‘own-self distortion’” (Quartermain).
Taking it stanza by stanza the reader is able to decipher in more simplicity what Loy was conveying. The first stanza, “I. / spawn of fantasies,” describes the author as standing alone and the one who begins having the false ideas. It also portrays cupid as just a part of fantasies. He represents a lie that people so desperately want to believe. “Pig Cupid his rosy snout/Rooting erotic garbage/ ‘Once upon a time’” could be said to be the sweet talk people use to get what they want, but in reality is it false. The second stanza “I would an eye in a Bengal light/ eternity in a sky rocket.” The sky- rocket shows that love can be compared to fireworks: bright and loud. It is the excitement and life of love that shines so all can see. “Constellations in an ocean,” can most closely resemble fate. Fate is what guides their love and the ocean can also be seen as an obstacle. Like young love the ocean has currents, tides, ups and down. The third stanza continues on with the hidden messages. “These are suspect places/ I must live in my lantern/ Trimming subliminal flicker,” the lantern represents the invisible surroundings the author has around her desires. “Virginal to the bellows of experience,” show that she is still inexperienced in this aspect of love.
Mina Loy is an expert at using syntax to display the significance of love in the poem. The missing spaces in between the words may show a moment of suspense like when she omits words altogether (Pietroiusti). The syntax shows in her line breaks, punctuation, vocabulary and distorted grammar. In “Love Songs” the first lines in the first stanza are static. Only one verb that is in the present tense, pulls, adds on to it. Mina Loy wrote the poem without refinement on purpose. In the way it was written it has its own meaning. The function of grammar also alters the meaning of the stanzas. Mina’s feminist side shows once again when writing in this syntax because she believes it is unavailable to women, and so it is up to her to reinvent it. Her syntactic writing displays binaries of speech and silence, and body and mind (Quartermain) (Lucia). Mina Loy's work in Love Songs is indeed unique. She has her own view of love and portrays that in her poems. Her past was the key to the elaborate, skillful yet disturbing language and allowed her to use syntax to help the reader to understand the meaning of her words and experience what she is writing about and bring it to life. She shows the true meaning of love and that not everything is what it appears to be, sometimes it is required to look deeper than just the first layer to truly understand the unexpected beauty of things. Her syntax added a twist to the poem and made the reader think twice about what her intentions were. Even if Mina Loy never saw herself as a poet the rest of the world respects what she has left behind. The imagery and life behind her words will go down in history for generations to come.