Poetic careers can follow an odd trajectory—Wallace Stevens, for instance, began publication in middle age, after he’d established himself in the insurance business; Rimbaud stopped writing poetry while still in his teens. Another part of this is that poetic reputations have an ebb & flow as well: Vachel Lindsay was quite popular in his time; now he’s a name that’s unfamiliar to most; Emily Dickinson was unknown in her time, but is now acknowledged as a truly great poet.
These sorts of fluctuations & trajectories are certainly relevant when we discuss the poet for today’s Weekly Poem, Mina Loy. At one time, Loy was the toast of Paris, London & New York; her poems were highly praised by TS Eliot, Yvor Winters, & Ezra Pound, who asked in a 1921 letter to Marianne Moore, “is there anyone in America except you, Bill [William Carlos Williams] and Mina Loy who can write anything of interest in verse?” However, by the 1980s, critic Hugh Kenner would say, “Her [Loy’s] utter absence from all canonical lists is one of modern literary history’s most perplexing data.” What happened to Mina Loy?
First, it must be admitted that Loy’s poetry is “difficult”; Loy’s poetical language & her poetical mind are constantly moving in unfamiliar realms—her language & diction can be idiosyncratic & even opaque, & her subject matter is often not conventionally poetical. Even when her subject is more recognizable, such as in the great sequence Love Songs to Johannes, she still manages to imagine the material in an unexpected way. In many ways, Loy’s writing is reminiscent of the work done by two of her close friends, Djuna Barnes & Gertrude Stein—like Barnes, she treated “forbidden” subjects, while writing in a completely individual & innovative style; like Stein, her language can seem to inhabit an unfamiliar grammar & spring from its own dictionary.
To my mind, all of these are strengths. Since there has been some revival of Loy, at least in academic & poetic circles in the last 25 years or so, it seems I’m not alone in this assessment. One poet to whom Loy has been compared frequently as her work has been positively re-evaluated is Emily Dickinson. Although there are any number of differences on a surface level, on a deeper level, Dickinson also wrote from a truly unfamiliar & individual perspective. In many ways, Dickinson’s firmly established canonical position has smoothed out these edges—we’ve learned how to read her, & to some extent, she becomes “familiar.” Yet consider the following lines by Dickinson:
‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch.
That nearer, every Day,
Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel
Until the agony
Toyed coolly with the final inch
of your delirious Hem—
These lines (& the remainder of her poem 414) staunchly resist paraphrase & summary; a poetic singularity that draws us inexorably in.
So it is with Loy’s work. Hope you enjoy the following poem (from around 1915), a description of a sort of Chaplinesque “Little Tramp.” Don’t be afraid to give it more than one read—& hope you may be inspired to read more of Loy. A generous selection of her poetry is available in The Lost Lunar Baedecker (Farrar Strauss & Giroux).
Ignoramus
Shut it up
Sing silence
To destiny
Give half-a-crown
To a magician
Half a glance
To window-eclipse
And count the glumes
Of your day's bargaining
Lying
In the lining
Of your pocket
While compromising
Between the perpendicular and horizontal
Some other tramp
Leans against
The night-nursery of trams
Puffs of black night
Quiver the neck
Of the Clown of Fortune
Dribble out of his trouser-ends
In dust-to-dust
Till cock-kingdom-come-crow
You can hear the heart-beating
Accoupling
of the masculine and feminine
Universal principles
Mating
And the martyrdom of morning
Caged with the love of houseflies
The avidity of youth
And incommensuration.
Day-spring
Bursting on repetition
"My friend the Sun
You have probably met before"
Or breakfasting on rain
You hurry
To interpolate
The over-growth
Of vegetation
With a walking-stick
Or smear a friend
With a greasy residuum
From boiling your soul down
You can walk to Empyrean to-gether
Under the same
Oil-silk umbrella
"I must have you
Count stars for me
Out of their numeral excess
Please keep the brightest
For the last
Mina Loy