review of Mina Loy's "The Last Lunar Baedeker"

review of

Mina Loy's "The Last Lunar Baedeker"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2378. "review of Mina Loy's "The Last Lunar Baedeker""

- complete review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- uploaded to my Critics website December 31, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticLoy.html

review of

Mina Loy's "The Last Lunar Baedeker"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticLoy.html

the truncated review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8198861309

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14918047-the-last-lunar-baedeker

Even if I hadn't been inclined to like Loy's writing this bk's scholarly biographical framing of her wd've convinced me that she was one of the most brilliant & charming people to ever live. This was edited & introduced by Roger L. Conover w/ a note by Jonathan Williams & published by the Jargon Society in 1982. They did such an excellent job that I'm vvvvveeeeerrrrrryyyyyy IMPRESSED.

From the 1st page of the introduction:

"For the last thirty years of her life she was virtually inaccessible to critics, "a sort of moral hermit" by her own definition who would rarely submit to interviews and was increasingly distant from her friends. She waved off would-be "rediscoverers" with a shrug: "But, why do you waste your time on these thoughts of mine? I was never a poet."" - p xv

To deny that she was a poet has a special importance to me.

"If her poems demanded a new kind of reader, so be it. It was not her intention to please the critics: "I have a fundamental masculine conceit that ascribes lack of appreciation of my work to want of perspicacity in the observer," she told Carl Van Vechten in 1914." - pp xv-xvi

& why not? If there are poets who tailor their work to what they think readers want then they're killing themselves to make malevolent forces happy as if that's what proves their skill & makes them popular. The latter might be true but they're missing that their beauty is only skin deep b/c there's nothing underneath, they've participated in their own reduction to a hollow shell.

William Carlos Williams wrote:

"Mina Loy was endowed from birth with a first-rate intelligence and a sensibility which has plagued her all her life facing a shoddy world. When she puts a word down on paper it is clean; that forces her fellows to shy away from it because they are not clean and will be contaminated by her cleanliness. Therefore she has not been a successful writer and couldn't care less. But it has hurt her chances of being known." - p xvi

What praise! Imagine having someone write something like that about you!

"But Mina Loy was not looking for laureates in the Pantheon of Verse. Her erotic love songs and bold satires had already been praised by Eliot and Pound, who considered her the most radical of the radical set whose work began appearing in magazines like Rogue, Others, Trend, and The Blind Man in the 1910s. Her manifestoes, plays, and drawings had long since entered little magazine history; they appeared in the "Exile" issue of The Little Review, the Waste Land issue of The Dial, the "291" issue of Camera Work. Among art critics, she had been called a prodigy even before she started writing poems. Her paintings had been exhibited in some of the landmark shows of the century: at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, the 1917 Independents' Exhibition in New York City, the 1914 Free Exhibition of International Futurists in Rome." - p xvii

"In the course of my research I have turned up letters in which Henry Miller, Thomas Merton, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and Walter Lowenfels confess their artistic debts to Mina Loy directly. I am told that Basil Bunting, Charles Henri Ford, Octavia Paz, John Ashberry, and Hayden Caruth admire her." - p xxii

Mina Loy seems to've been very active in multiple cities, in multiple countries. She was THERE.. & it shows in her work.

"There is no way of knowing how many hours Freud sat for her, or Harry Kemp. But her portraits have aged as well as their subjects, whose approval was evident when she was done. Carl Van Vechten and James Joyce chose her likenesses of them to be published, Gertrude Stein endorsed hers with a signature. Marinetti bought his; Papini's was sent to Rome." - p xxiv

Loy's the who's who at the center of the who's whos.

"She had only two books of poems published in her lifetime. The first was issued in a paperbound edition by Robert McAlmon's Contact Publishing Company in 1923, the second in an edition of 500 copies under Jonathan Williams' Jargon imprint in 1958. Both books went out of print almost immediately, though it should be said that the former was helped to that state by New York City customs officials who took it upon themselves to decide that Lunar Baedecker (sic) contained pornographic material. A shipment of books bound for the Chaucer Head Bookshop was intercepted at the docks, and probably less than a hundred copies ever made it into the country. One of the more fragile books issued by McAlmon's press, it is now almost never seen outside rare book rooms or dealers' catalogues where it is a de rigueur item at $450." - p xxiv

Sheesh, how do these ignorant fools ever get into such positions of power where they're able to supress culture? I sent something iike 50 white shirts to a friend of mine in Montréal who offered to silkscreen on them the ad for a show I'd recently given there. She mailed a box of them back to me in Baltimore w/o my having any knowledge of how many she'd screened or how many colors she'd used. US Customs intercepted them & I was summoned to their offices where I was questioned. They wdn't let me see the shirts. They wanted to know how much they were worth. I told them, truthfully, NOTHING - that my friend had printed on them for free & that I'd probably be giving them away - that, in fact, we were losing money on them b/c I'd paid for the shirts & their mailing to Canada & that my friend had not only printed on them for free but had mailed them back at her own expense.

They insisted that I put a price on them. I asked them how I cd do that given that I didn't know how many there were or how many colors were used. I ended up forced to pay them something between $25 & $75 for what turned out to be 25 shirts. They made more money off something that they had nothing to do w/ the making of than I did. When I was at the cashier's window paying the money one of the Customs officials came to me & asked me what kind of homosexual cult the t-shirts were for?! He seemed excited by this. The image on the shirts had my naked penis shown w/ my DNA tattoo above it. It had never occurred to me that someone wd interpret this as being somehow homosexual. & this was a person in the position to hold my work hostage & make me pay to get it back. How ludicrous can it get?! & that's not my only experience along those lines.

""Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose" is the key to the whole of Mina Loy's private mythology. Getting it right was the first order of business of this volume." - p xxvi

& that's the epic that I was most impressed by.

"But for the endurance of some memoir-reknowned legends about her wit and beauty, Dada diarists' attention to her career as the widow of Arthur Cravan, and the recent anthology appearances I have mentioned, her name would by now have vanished entirely." - p xxvii

Ah, yes, how many of the truly creative & brilliant people have disappeared in history? Often b/c their creativity was too difficult or 'offensively observant' or challenging? Not to mention, of course, non-commercial - or b/c idiots like the NYC Customs people disappeared their work? I've been struggling against the anti-creative forces that try to impose their death culture standards throughout my entire adult life - that's one of the reasons why I'm writing this bk review.

Loy's love life wd make an amazing novel in & of itself. Marinetti, the primary spokesperson for Italian Futurism, was lovers w/ her. I love Futurism, despite its macho overtones, & find Loy's association w/ it to be somewhat amazing considering her Feminism & Futurism's largely male orientation.

"In her early work, she declares an open season on a number of public figures by subjecting them to satiric treatment in her poems. She disaffected herself from her one-time lovers and fellow-manifestoists Giovanni Papini and Filippo Marinetti by making unabashed use of intimate "material" gleaned from sexual and social encounters with them."

[..]

"Briefly a member of the Futurist ring and special friend of its grand muftis, Mina Loy's infatuation with the group ended when it embraced fascism. Her disillusion gave way to a polemical hostility that is the source of most of the satires in this volume. Poems like "Giovanni Franchi," "The Ineffectual Marriage," and "Lions' Jaws" are only sparring pieces, however, compared to her experimental verse play, The Pamperers. Uncollected here for reasons of length, the play inaugurated the "Modern Forms section of The Dial." - p xxxiii

In all honesty, tho, I have to say that, as much as I admire Loy's work, it doesn't come anywhere close to the imagination & innovativeness of most Futurist work, including Marinetti's. Still, the above got me curious about The Pamperers & I hoped to be able to purchase a copy but had to be satisfied w/ copying it from a university source. Here's an excerpt:

"A MAN: (Whose monocle has been hypnotized

to idea associations by the luminous dial)

I don't know anything about Marinetti;

I don't want to know anything

about Marinetti but I respect him

. . . he has a clean collar I am willing to

accept the creed of any man who wears a clean collar

SOMEBODY: Why the devil shouldn't

Marinetti wear a clean collar?

I don't know why Marinetti shouldn't

wear a clean collar, all I say is . . .

Marinetti wears a clean collar!

OSSY: Di . . . if you half guessed what

I've caught in the stables, you'd throw

Futurism to . . .

DIANA: Don't mean . . . that I'm out of

fashion again

OSSY: Since 1 P.M. . . . "

"In the 1920s, again employing Futurist-style tactics for ironic effect, she invented a political party called Psycho-Democracy and circulated the sensational "platform" of this one-woman movement around the streets of Florence. The original pamphlet establishes Mina Loy as one of the first employers of psychotype-typographical characters and arrangements of lines that participate in the expression of ideas, giving a violent exuberance to the page. As a group, Mina Loy's Florentine poems and satires constitute the most substantial literary response to Futurism ever made by a woman under the direct influence of the movement, but historians of the avant-garde and the feminist literary establishment have overlooked this oeuvre." - p xxxiv

As far as I can tell, the "psychotype-typographical characters and arrangements of lines that participate in the expression of ideas" isn't reproduced here. That seems like one of the only shortcomings of this edition. As for "one-woman movement"s, such things are always of interest to me. It seems like I've encountered a considerable number of those but the only one-person mvmt I can think of at the moment is Arthur Berkoff's Pregroperativism. I think that I, & a few others, may've been designated Pregroperativists by Arthur but I'm not sure any of us ever had anything other than the vaguest idea what it meant.

"There was no thought of making money. Contributors were not paid, and Arensberg agreed to finance the paper at a loss. For in those days, the avant-garde did not take stock of itself in commercial terms, but rather by the number of people whose passion, curiousity, or anger could be stirred by a radical new idea. By this standard, Others was an instant success." - p xxxvi

IMO, the avant-garde, intrinsically, does "not take stock of itself in commercial terms, but rather by the number of people whose passion, curiousity, or anger could be stirred by a radical new idea" wch is one of the reasons why I think that a recent bk that is contextualized as "avant-garde" that I have work in is NOT avant-garde. Its editor/publisher is entirely too much of a business-person for that to be the case.

"She has seen so many new movements that she has decided to initiate one herself and call it "Vitalism." This woman is half-way through the door into To-morrow." - p xliv

"To-morrow"? What about 2-morrow or too-morrow?

"One night Baroness Loringhoven painted her body, shaved her head, and marched off to the opera with a coal scuttle perched on her head." - p xlvi

Go, girl! That's my kind of gal! But was she naked? I went to the symphony once wearing a translucent jacket that had 4 glow-in-the dark rectangles on its back. The hall was dark so the appearance was of a window w/ light coming thru it moving thru the space. Some time later, I was wearing that same jacket in a supermarket when an excited woman stopped me & asked me if I'd been wearing that jacket at the symphony. She sd she'd seen it from all the way across the hall.

On to Arthur Craven a person of great importance in Loy's life who disappeared, leaving her love-stricken for the remainder of her life.

"It is comrade Trotsky who tells us in his Autobiography of his mid-Atlantic encounter with "a boxer, also a poet and nephew of Oscar Wilde, who openly pronounced that he preferred to slug Yankees in a noble sport than to get his chest driven in by some ignorant German."

"What name the passenger used with Trotsky is anyone's guess, for the poet-boxer was a fugitive, forger, and master of disguise who had eluded military authorities and conscription officers for two years as he roamed through Central and Western Europe. But the name on his passport was Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, alias Arthur Craven, born to British parents in Lausanne, Switzerland, on May 22, 1887." - p xlvii

"Fabian was endowed from birth, it seems, with a rebellious and stormy nature, a belief that he could live according to his own rules and in defiance of conventional codes of behavior. He did. Having been expelled from several schools in his early teens, he struck out for America at the age of 16, spent a few months in New York, then worked his way to California as a lumberjack, chauffeur, orange-picker, and butcher. It was in America that he learned to use his fists; he had to to survive the tests that hoboes and migrant workers put him to in boxcars and fields." - p xlviii

"he shocked his opponents by boasting loudly of his accomplishments, listing his past titles, and citing the elegant tramp pedigree which preceded his life in the ring:

"hotel thief, muleteer, snake-charmer, chauffeur, ailurophile, grandson of the Queen's Chancellor, nephew of Oscar Wilde, sailor, gold prospector, poet with the shortest hair in the world . . ." - p xlix

"ailurophile" = cat lover. That must've sent chills down the spines of his opponents, if they knew what it meant.

"In March, 1910, he entered the light-heavyweight competition in the Eighth Meeting of the Boxing Championships for Amateurs and Soldiers organized by the French Federation of Boxing Clubs. Through a bizarre series of defaults, disqualifications, and withdrawals on the part of his opponents, he succeeded in becoming Amateur Light-Heavyweight Champion of France without fighting a single bout." - p xlix

"The Bal Bullier was a favorite nightspot among boxers, and it was there, after successfully defending his title as Heavyweight Champion of the World on December 19, 1913, that Jack Johnson met Arthur Craven and invited him to join the decadent crowd "making the rounds at Johnson's expense of the night spots of Montmartre . . . tossing off champagne, flicking cigars. . . ." In an American interview a few years later, Craven recalled his first encounter with Johnson outside the ring. "He's a man of scandal," he began.

"I like him for that-eccentric, he's lively, good-natured, and gloriously vain; anything that has to do wth Johnson has to do with a crowd of policemen. . . . . I have a great admiration for him. . . . After Poe, Whitman, and Emerson, he is the most glorious American. . . . If there is a revolution . . . I shall fight to have him enthroned King of The United States." - p l

Ha ha! & if you listen to Miles Davis's "Tribute to Jack Johnson" while driving, you'll almost inevitably speed.

"It was their season to fall in love, and America's season to enter war. Mina Loy knew when she saw the recruitment offices open in Manhattan that Cravan would have to leave the country. She even looked approvingly at his disguise when he came to say goodbye. The military uniform would make getting rides easier as he hitchhiked north, he explained, and she thought to herself that only Craven would be able to avoid the draft by posing as a soldier on furlough." - lviii

"That Craven was given to perpetrating hoaxes of this kind was not forgotten when he mysteriously disappeared in Mexico in 1919. Some say he drowned, others that he was murdered. But the facts are that no body was ever found, nor a single witness." - p liv

Will I ever get past the introduction? Its excellence makes it well worth dwelling on. It's to be credited to:

"Roger L. Conover

January 17, 1982

Somerville, Massachusetts" - p lxi

We move onto a biographical timetable:

"c. 1911

American Futurist painter Frances Simpson Stevens is houseguest." - p lxvi

Having never heard of this painter I immediately became curious.

"Stevens explicitly identified her work as futurist. In an article for The Popular Science Monthly, she articulated her vision:

""A futurist artist in Italy, seeing an ordinary street car go by, realizes the future possibilities of power and speed, and he begins to paint great trains going so fast that they lose their definite form in the lines of direction. Motion and light destroy the solidity of the material bodies... The futurists make their engines move, throb and create. Something is always happening in a futurist's pictures, and the great variety of color and changing lines helps to convey this impression." Frances Simpson Stevens, 1917

"Very little of Stevens' art has survived. One work that has is <i>Dynamic Velocity of Interborough Rapid Transit Power Station</i> at the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Simpson_Stevens

"c. 1914

Affair with Marinetti, whom she credits for "twenty years added to my life from mere contact with his exuberant personality" though his "interest in me only weathered two months of war fever."

"The only thing that frightens me is the fear of not finding someone who appeals to me as much." - p lxviii

1916

"Barcelona: Arthur Craven faces Jack Johnson in heavyweight bout April 23. Zurich: Cabaret Voltaire opens; Dada is born." - p lxix

1923-1930

"During these years she will be present at such landmark and memoir-renowned events as Joyce's reading at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Pound's & Antheil's Salle Pleyel opera, Harriet Monroe's welcome party, and William Carlos Williams' departure soirée. She will meet Margaret Anderson, Sylvia Beach, Kay Boyle, André Breton, Mary Butts, Colette, Jean Cocteau, Caresse Crosby, Nancy Cunard, Jo Davidson, Robert & Sonia Delaunay, Hilda Doolittle, Ford Maddox Ford, André Gide, Remy de Gourmont, Jane Heap, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene Jolas, Kiki of Montparnasse, Mariette Mills, Adrienne Monnier, Erik Satie, René Taupin, Iris Tree, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Valéry." - p lxxii

For people such as myself who thrive off of creativity & the stimulus of ideas & inspired conversation such a list as the above seems like a paradise of sorts. To other people, for whom culture is just something taken for granted & barely noticed, these are just names of largely unknown people whose significance is lost.

"1929

New York shocks Paris: suicides of Harry Crosby and Jacques Rigaut. M.L. reads poetry at Gertrude Stein's 27, rue de Fleurus salon.

"1930

Obsessed with fears that her ideas are being stolen ("the French idea of business is the invasion of other people's copyright"), plaged by back taxes, unable to find reliable help, M.L. folds business. Djuna Barnes moves back to New York, temporarily acts as M.L.'s agent.

"Henry Miller moves to Paris." - p lxxiv

Mina Loy dies on September 25, 1966. I wd've been 13 yrs old at the time, I cd've met her. A lost opportunity. I sometimes think about that w/ people whose lifespan has overlapped mine.

Loy's poetry starts on page 3. In a poem entitled "THE DEAD" she writes:

"In one impalpable

Omniprevalent Dimension

We are turned inside out

"Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs

Street lights

Footle in our ocular darkness" - p 6

My note to myself re the above: "Was this too harsh for people?!"

One of my main ways of appraising poetry, & writing in general, is the freshness of the vocabulary to me & the way in wch the words are combined.

"Pure purposeless cremite

of centripetal sentience

"Upon the carnose horologe of the ego

the vibrant tendon index moves not

"since the black lightning desecrated

the retinal altar" - p 10

Misery & how to counteract it are always important subjects to me. From "Human Cylinders":

"Having eaten without tasting

Talked without communion

And at least two of us

Loved a very little

Without seeking

To know if our two miseries

In the lucid rush-together of automatons

Could form one opulent wellbeing" - p 12

An excerpt from a 'circus poem', "CRAB-ANGEL":

""Per Bacco! 'Tis an idiot dwarf

hooked to a wire to make him jump"" - p 15

A reference to "JOYCE'S ULYSSES":

"Phoenix

of Irish fires

lighten the Occident" - p 20

""THE STARRY SKY" OF WYNDHAM LEWIS", a writer I still 'need' to read more by:

"In the

Austere theatre of the Infinite

The ghost of the stars

Perform the "Presence"" - p 23

I don't think I'll ever get tired of "POE":

"a lyric elixir of death

embalms

the spindle spirits of your hour glass loves

on moon spun nights" - P 25

"VIRGINS PLUS CURTAINS

MINUS DOTS":

[..]

"Virgin s without dots*"

[..]

"*Marriage portions (dowry)" - p 36

That's certainly one of those references I wdn't've understood w/o the footnote.

"THREE MOMENTS IN PARIS

"1. One O'Clock at Night

"Though you have never possessed me

I hav belonged to you since the beginning of time

And sleepily I sit on your chair beside you

Leaning against your shoulder

And your careless arm across my back gesticulates

As your indisputable male voice roars

Through my brain and my body

Arguing "Dynamic Decomposition"

Of which I understand nothing

Sleepily" - p 39

&, of course, I wonder 'who?'. Wish you were here.

& we get to a satirical Futurist play or satire OF Futurism or some such:

"1. Collision

"Huge hall-disparate planes, angle-whiteness-central arc-light-blaze

Emptiness-

But for one man-

A dependant has shut the door-

"Man: "Back! Bang door! Succession-incentive-ejection-idea-space-cleared of nothings-leaves everything-material-exhaustless creation!"

"Stares blankly into arc-light-presses electric button-shattering insistent noise surrounds room-intermittently arc-light extinguishes-vari-colored shafts of lightning crash through fifty-nine windows at irregular heights-the floor worked by propellers-rises and falls irrhythmically-the dissymetric receding and incursive planes and angles of walls and ceiling interchange kaleidoscopically to successive intricacies-occasional explosions irrupt the modes of" - p 78

I'd like to witness this play realized. According to AI Overview:

"The primary reasons the plays were not originally performed are:

"Technical Impossibility: Loy's stage directions in "Collision" called for effects considered "impossible to carry out on a real stage" at the time, such as matter-shifting vibration, shattering glass, and a "pandemonium of sound and motion" triggered by an "electric button," which would be dangerous or prohibitively expensive."

[..]

""Collision": In 2016, "Collision" was staged at the Bluecoat in the UK, using corporeal mime to explore how gestures from 1915 could be viewed a century later. A 3D animation has also been created to realize the piece in a digital performance, focusing on its abstract nature."

I truly love things like this, things where something's imagined that's technically infeasible at the time but potentially realizable in the future.

The following is organized under "Satires: 1914-1923" but it seems more like realism to me:

"These were friends of mine; they lived in a room-with a cobweb and a bed-sofa-under which they stored the family valuables; and a cardboard box full of a rich boy's pajamas, and the photo of a grueseome wisp, their first baby-dead of starvation.

"Sophia was gentle with it-but her eyes glistened to the treasure, a newspaper cutting from which she read, how her husband had hanged himself in a doorway-cut down at the critical moment by the police.

""He often does that," she said proudly-"He's so neurasthenic."

"At their hungriest their passion had not waned, yet she had never loved him so much as when she saw his name in print." - p 82

In a section labelled "Love Songs: 1915-1917" is a part of a poem that I noted to myself is the "passage that converted me to loving her poetry":

"The steps go up for ever

And they are white

And the first step is the last white

Forever

Coloured conclusions

Smelt to synthetic

Whiteness

Of my

Emergence

And I am burnt quite white

In the climacteric

Withdrawal of your sun

And wills and words all white

Suffuse

Illimtable monotone

"White where there is nothing to see

But a white towel

Wipes the cymophanous sweat

-Mist rise of living-

From your

Etilate body

And the white dawn

Of your New Day

Shuts down on me

"Unthinkable that white over there-

Is smoke from your house" - pp 103-104

But then, by page 118, I say to myself: "Why do I like this? I don't know!"

"Incorporeal express trains

from opposite directions

of unequal lengths and velocities

flash through his abstract eye

determines instantly the time

to a decimal fraction of a second

they take to pass each other" - p 118

Perhaps it's b/c it seems like Italian Futurist imagery to me.

That was from "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose" as is the next "Marriage Boxes":

"Oh God

that men and women

having undertaken to vanquish one another

should be allowed

to shut themselves up in hot boxes and breed" - p 143

Loy is full of wry observations. The reader reaches late poems on 179.

"his earnestness

hushed by the hiccough holocaust

of otiose

hoboes hob-nobbing

with obtund oafs

"in candid cupidity

and oathy psalmody" - p 192

Who doesn't enjoy a little alitteration every once. & awhile?

From "HILARIOUS ISRAEL":

"What esoteric "tic"

transforms

metallic thorns of succorless fosterlands

to pastel limbs of chorus-girls in bloom,

transforms

the blood on pogrom exits

to rubies of pomegranates

on costume?" - p 207

It seems that poetry is the "esoteric "tic"".

& then there's the only short (1 stanza) poem:

"OMEN OF VICTORY

"Women in uniform

relaxed for tea

under a shady garden tree

discover

a dove's feather

fallen in the sugar." - p 214

I have this excerpt from "OVERNIGHT" described as "exemplary poetry":

"An invasion of veils

swathes the green reason of our ailanthus

in an asylum of translucence.

"Leaves in cells

of summer icicles-

"Blades of dime emerald

spear the sun

through furled film

exquisitely-" - p 258

Why "exemplary poetry"? I'm so speechless when it comes to poetry. I'd like to think that the imagery somehow transcends the obvious.

Under "Didactic, Polemical and Prescriptive Writings" there's a "FEMINIST MANIFESTO" wch begins like this:

"The Feminst Movement as instituted at present is INADEQUATE.

"Women, if you want to realize yourselves (for you are on the brink of a devastating psychological upheavel) all your pet illusions must be unmasked. The lies of centuries have got to be discarded. Are you prepared for the WRENCH?

"There is no half-measure, no scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition. Nothing short of Absolute Demolition will bring about reform. So cease to place your confidence in economic legislation, vice-crusades and uniform education. You are glossing over REALITY.

"Professional and commercial careers are opening up for you. Is that all you want?" - p 269

Is it possible for me to love a woman who isn't a Feminist?! People who hold their own against oppressive & demeaning forces are more likely to earn respect. People whose weakness sucks the strength of people they're dependent on can be detrimental to both.

"The fictitious value of woman as identified with her physical purity is too easy a standby. It renders her lethargic in the acquisition of intrinsic merits of character by which she could obtain a concrete value. Therefore, the first self-enforced law for the female sex, as protection against the manmade bogey of virtue (which is the principle instrument of her subjugation) is the unconditional surgical destruction of virginity throughout the female population at puberty." - p 270

Interesting. Since I didn't grow up in a culture where virginity was expected in one's mate I haven't really thought about that much. I suppose the patriarchal rationale for such an expected virginity is twofold: 1. it's expected to function as a guarantee of loyalty to the possessive male, 2. it's expected to be an insurance against sexually-transmitted diseases as protection for children. Of course, the patriarchy doesn't seem to demand the same of the male making the whole thing control-freaking & hypocritical. However, I think a dildo wd be preferable to surgery & it can be operated successfully by the virgin in question.

But 'What about International Psycho-Democracy?' you ask:

"Mina Loy's Tenets

"The International Psycho-Democratic Party forms in natural consequence of the present evolutional status of man to terminate the period of evolution through "simple existence" and to initiate the period of evolution through "compound existence."

"Our purpose is the instatement of Actual Values to destroy the power-inimical to man-of those things he does not understand. Our party stands for the redemption of the Intellect from the hypnotism of Education and the Press, for the new system of Experimental Ideative Exchange, and for the Indication of Explorative Being. Our intent is to reproach the Heroic Personification of Man as Dominator of the Elements until those elements are at the disposal of every man, to his greatest advantage, to his least inconvenience; and to inspire the leisure requisite to the human organism in its progressive racial conquest of consciousness.

"Our Party is an Invitation, not a Control. We fight with Brains for the substitution of Preference for Prejudice and the obviation of social crises by the Excavation of individual and group psychology.

"Put yourself at your own disposal.

"Live life at first hand.

"Make the world your Salon." - p 276

Parts of the above are a bit confusing to me. At 1st, I was just going to quote the paragraphs w/o the last 3 sentences. Then I realized that those 3 sentences are what I can identify w/ the most so I included them.

"The Psycho-Democrat is

"Man, Woman or Child of good sense and with imagination, having a normal love of Life and sympathetic indifference to their neighbor's obligations.

"The living successor of that travesty of man, the Dummy Public originated by the Press, financed by the Capitalist" - p 276

In other words, the Psycho-Democrat is resistant to brainwashing, a state as rare as ever if not moreso these days. While brainwashing has become increasingly refined the resistance to it has become more & more demonized.

"The Appeal of Psycho-Democracy for the conscious direction of evolution is an appeal to the thinker, the scientist, the philosopher, the writer, the artist, the mechanic, the worker, to join intelligent forces in a concerted effort to evolve and establish a new social symbolism, a new social rhythm, a new social snobbism with a human psychological significance to that of militarism."

[..]

"To vindicate Humanity's claim to a Divine Destiny: not to endeavor to eliminate the indestructible forces in human nature but to establish a new social system for their utilization. To present intellectual heroism as a popular ideal in place of physical heroism encouraging the expression of individual psychology in place of mob-psychology. To believe that man has the conceptual power to create a substitute for war, having the same stimulus to action as the hazard of death, the same spur to renascence as devastation, and that his mentality will evolve new forms of expressive action to inspire him to such ebullitions of enthusiasm as does the call to arms." - p 282

I've been an anti-war activist, at some level or another, since I became aware of war as a teenager when the US was devastating Vietnam for no good reason whatsoever. Hence, Loy's proposal of an "intellectual heroism" as a replacement for war-mongering (my words, not hers) is highly appealing. Alas, I think there's more behind war than an admiration for "physical heroism" & other more hidden ulterior motives of powers-that-be. War is a deeply entrenched establishment not likely to be uprooted by anything but profound changes to human nature & human society. Loy's proposal at least approaches this & I tip the hat I'm not wearing to her ghost in appreciation.

"THE ARTIST AND THE PUBLIC":

"Education is the putting of spectacles on wholesome eyes. The Public does not naturally care about these spectacles, the cause of its quarrels with art. The Public likes to be jolly; The Artist is jolly and quite irresponsible. Art is The Divine Joke, and any Public, and any Artist, can see a nice, easy simple joke, such as the sun. But only Artists and Serious Critics can look at a greyish stickiness on smooth canvas." - p 285

That's just what I was saying to Mabel the other day - except for the part about the stickiness of the Serious Public & what to do about it. As for "Education is the putting of spectacles on wholesome eyes."? I cdn't agree more.

Then there's a long thingamawhoosiewob about Gertrude Stein. I thought she was a great writer until I read her "The Making of Americans". Now, I think she's full of shit. You can read my completely hilarious critique of her in one of the volumes of my "Wrjtjng spelled w/ a "q"" - wch is something you shd do regardless of the color of yr shoes. Loy loves her. Well, we all have our faults.

"["]Each one is one. Each one is very well accustomed to be one. Each one is very well accustomed to be that one. Each one is one." (Galeries Lafayette). Compare with 'Vanity of vanity; vanity of vanities; all is vanity' of Ecclesiastes." - p 289

Bringing in the bible is a surprise, at least Loy didn't rave about how rhythmically brilliant Stein is(n't). In fact, Loy's reading of Stein is the best I've come across & I've read a fair amt.

"It is the variety of her mental processes that gives such fresh significance to her words, as if she had got them out of bed early in the morning and washed them in the sun.

"They make a new appeal to us after the friction of an uncompromised intellect has scrubbed the meshed messes of traditional associations off them." - p 292

"The greatest incertitude experienced while reading Gertrude Stein is the indecision as to whether you are psychoanalyzing her, or she, you.

"There is a good deal of ginger floating around in this book of Geography and Plays, as are also pins stuck about. The ginger so far escapes me, the pins I accept as an acute materialization of the concentric." - p 296

We move on to her consideable appreciation of Joseph Cornell, an artist whose work I've noted as being loved by almost every artist who's ever mentioned him to me.

"The Futurists' Boss once insisted to me he had the right to sign his own name to the most revered of masterpieces had he the wits to appreciate them; which might infer that a work of art exists in recognition . . . I wondered if the universe ensued from a nostalgia of the gods for an audience.

"Eventually Surrealism qualified this presumptuous claim of borrower's rights. When Max Ernst masterpieced a wonderworld he brought in a new-view by cutting and rearranging dead engravers' illustrations." - p 301

Thus Loy broaches the subject of appropriation, something that got to be beaten to death by the talent-free decades later.

"So long I have sought a sentence to reproduce the sublimity of Cornell's objects. Without success. Still, we can take the sublime for granted. After all, it is a sensation. Visitors to this exhibition might gasp on confrontation.

"November 25, 1950" - p 302

"APHORISMS ON MODERNISM

"MODERNISM is a prophet crying in the wilderness that Humanity is wasting its time.

CONSCIOUSNESS originated in the nostalgia of the universe for an audience."

[..]

"ANARCHISTS in art are art's instantaneous aristocracy." - p 311

Pithy.

"NOTES ON CHILDHOOD":

". . . I used to believe I could create flawless people by holding a dove's egg under my armpit." - p 314

Now, THAT's a belief one doesn't run across (or over) every day! I wd've liked to read further elucidation.

Her writings on Craven are as convincingly loving as anything I've ever read:

"Arrived at a new town he would give it a glance and assess its population-then tramp through every street-round its suburbs, along the harbors, through the warehouses on the wharfs, past the shunting lines of railways to the botanical gardens, the zoo, the municipal museum, the shops, the circuses-wherever one went with him one was sure to arrive sooner or later in some forbidden spot-so intuitively did he separate himself from the accepted places." - p 320

& in the textual notes:

"The Blind Man was devoted to Independent Artists, revolution in the arts, and editorial non-censorship as championed by R. Mutt. The magazine folded when Roché staked its future vs. Picabia's 391 on a chess game, and lost. Louise is probably Louise Arensberg." - p 315

"R. Mutt" being, of course, that famous American plumber.

& the ILLUSTRATION NOTES AND CREDITS just prove even further how delightfully scholarly this is:

"3. E: Alfred Kreymborg, Troubador (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925). P: Haweis Family Collection. "Ducy Haweis Stephen's Wife Mother of Giles" is inscribed in the owner's hand at bottom of the original. Miss Loy was called "Ducy" (though usually spelled Ducie) by friends in Florence and is referred to by this name in Florentine vignettes written by Mabel Dodge and Carl Van Vechten. The nickname is mnemonic-coined because she was habitually confusing the formal and informal German pronouns, du and Sie." - p 330

So. there.

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