Loy, Mina

(1882-1966)

   Born Mina Gertrude Lowy in London, the daughter of a second-generation Hungarian Jewish father and an English Protestant mother, she studied art in London, Munich, and Paris, then moved to Florence in 1907. She was highly skilled in so many different fields that it is difficult to say which is predominant. In Florence she came into contact with the Futurists and by 1913 she was using Futurist theories in literature to advance feminist politics in her poetry. She was not afraid to use taboo subjects in her poetry-childbirth, sex, and disillusionment in marriage-subjects that challenged women to free themselves of emotional and physical dependence on men. She finally settled in New York in 1937, then moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 1953, where she died. "Love Songs" was published in the magazine Others in 1915. Some of her publications: Lunar Baedeker, 1923. Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose, 1923-1925. Lunar Baedeker and Time Tables, 1958. Some of her other poems: "Apology of Genius," "Brancusi's Golden Bird," "Gertrude Stein," "Italian Pictures," "Jules Pascin," "Omen of Victory," "On Third Avenue," "The Widow's Jazz," "Three Moments in Paris."

   Sources: American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Vol. 1. Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, et al., ed. Library of America, 2000. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Keith Tuma, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Life of Mina Loy. Modern American Poetry (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/loy/loy.htm). Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English. Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields, eds. Swallow Press, 1969. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Jazz Poetry Anthology. Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa, ed. Indiana University Press, 1991. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Virago Book of Love Poetry. Wendy Mulford, ed. Virago Press, 1990.