The Lost Lunar Baedeker - by Mina Loy (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Mina Loy's technique and subjects - prostitution, menstruation, destitution, and suicide - shock even some modernists and she vanished from the poetry scene as dramatically as she had appeared on it. Roger Conover has resuced the key texts from the pages of forgotten publications, and has included all of the futurist and feminist satires, poems from Loy's Paris and New York periods, and the complete cycle of "Love Songs," as well as previously unknown texts and detailed notes.

From the Back Cover

There was a time when it was common to couple Mina Loy's name with that of W. C. Williams or Marianne Moore: her advanced contemporaries considered her a literary and artistic genius - a descendant of Sappho by way of Emily Dickinson. But the public was scandalized by her work, and some critics openly scorned it. Not only were her Futurist-inspired techniques unlike anything most readers had encountered before, but her subjects - procreation, parturition, prostitution, suicide, addiction, retardation - were considered shocking even by some modernists. Mina Loy vanished from the literary scene just as dramatically as she arrived on it, and for most of the century her bold experiments have remained a well-kept secret. But in recent years Loy's work has been discovered by a new generation of poets and critics, and has begun to surface in revisionist anthologies. What has been needed is a reliable text of the essential Loy poems. To assemble The Lost Lunar Baedeker, Roger Conover has rescued Loy's poems and prose works from the Dada magazines and other ephemeral publications where they first appeared. All of Loy's notorious Futurist and feminist satires are included, as are many poems from her Paris and New York periods, the complete cycle of "Love Songs", and several previously unknown texts. Detailed notes accompany the text.

Review Quotes

"[Mina Loy] may now be launched on a posthumous career as the electric-age Blake." --Hugh Kenner, The Washington Times

"Mina Loy has finally been admitted into 'the company of poets, ' the canon. As if she cared." --Thom Gunn, The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Mina Loy was a British artist, poety, playwright, novelist, futurist and actress. She is the author of Lost Lunar Baedeker.