Mina Loy: Woman, poet, genius, nomad

Abstract

Following renewed efforts to reclaim Loy’s legacy and to contribute to an emerging archive of scholarship on her work, this article addresses the perplexing lack of attention to her poetry that was often lauded by iconic poets of her time. We focus on selected poems that took shape not only within the mélange of Loy’s writings, visual design and art but also within the context of her fascinating and tragic life experiences. Here the body in all its materiality – from childbirth to death – plays a significant role in Loy’s work, particularly in the context of her expressions of complex entanglements of the corporeal/spiritual, human/non-human, self/other, words/sounds and individual/collective in her oeuvre. Although Loy’s work was shaped by modernism, feminism, avant-gardism and Christianity it also transcended these influences – her work ultimately reaches toward a broader focus on those who are abject in society, and on the role of aesthetic consciousness in formulations of a more humane world.