The Lost Lunar Baedeker Read online

  The LB text of “Love Songs” is printed verbatim below, with the exception of two emendations:

  VII. 11: sarsenet] sarsanet

  X.6: archetypal] architypal

  Love Songs (1923)

  I

  Spawn of fantasies

  Sifting the appraisable

  Pig Cupid his rosy snout

  Rooting erotic garbage

  “Once upon a time”

  Pulls a weed white star-topped

  Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane

  I would an eye in a Bengal light

  Eternity in a sky-rocket

  Constellations in an ocean

  Whose rivers run no fresher

  Than a trickle of saliva

  These are suspect places

  I must live in my lantern

  Trimming subliminal flicker

  Virginal to the bellows

  Of experience

  Colored glass.

  II

  At your mercy

  Our Universe

  Is only

  A colorless onion

  You derobe

  Sheath by sheath

  Remaining

  A disheartening odour

  About your nervy hands

  III

  Night

  Heavy with shut-flower’s nightmares

  — — — — — — — — — — —

  Noon

  Curled to the solitaire

  Core of the

  Sun

  IV

  Evolution fall foul of

  Sexual equality

  Prettily miscalculate

  Similitude

  Unnatural selection

  Breed such sons and daughters

  As shall jibber at each other

  Uninterpretable cryptonyms

  Under the moon

  Give them some way of braying brassily

  For caressive calling

  Or to homophonous hiccoughs

  Transpose the laugh

  Let them suppose that tears

  Are snowdrops or molasses

  Or anything

  Than human insufficiencies

  Begging dorsal vertebrae

  Let meeting be the turning

  To the antipodean

  And Form a blurr

  Anything

  Than seduce them

  To the one

  As simple satisfaction

  For the other

  V

  Shuttle-cock and battle-door

  A little pink-love

  And feathers are strewn

  VI

  Let Joy go solace-winged

  To flutter whom she may concern

  VII

  Once in a mezzanino

  The starry ceiling

  Vaulted an unimaginable family

  Bird-like abortions

  With human throats

  And Wisdom’s eyes

  Who wore lamp-shade red dresses

  And woolen hair

  One bore a baby

  In a padded porte-enfant

  Tied with a sarsenet ribbon

  To her goose’s wings

  But for the abominable shadows

  I would have lived

  Among their fearful furniture

  To teach them to tell me their secrets

  Before I guessed

  — Sweeping the brood clean out

  VIII

  Midnight empties the street

  — — — To the left a boy

  —One wing has been washed in rain

  The other will never be clean any more —

  Pulling door-bells to remind

  Those that are snug

  To the right a haloed ascetic

  Threading houses

  Probes wounds for souls

  — The poor can’t wash in hot water —

  And I don’t know which turning to take —

  IX

  We might have coupled

  In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment

  Or broken flesh with one another

  At the profane communion table

  Where wine is spill’t on promiscuous lips

  We might have given birth to a butterfly

  With the daily-news

  Printed in blood on its wings

  X

  In some

  Prenatal plagiarism

  Fœtal buffoons

  Caught tricks

  — — — — —

  From archetypal pantomime

  Stringing emotions

  Looped aloft

  — — — —

  For the blind eyes

  That Nature knows us with

  And the most of Nature is green

  — — — — — — — — — — —

  XI

  Green things grow

  Salads

  For the cerebral

  Forager’s revival…

  And flowered flummery

  Upon bossed bellies

  Of mountains

  Rolling in the sun

  XII

  Shedding our petty pruderies

  From slit eyes

  We sidle up

  To Nature

  — — — that irate pornographist

  XIII

  The wind stuffs the scum of the white street

  Into my lungs and my nostrils

  Exhilarated birds

  Prolonging flight into the night

  Never reaching — — — — — — —

  Other Writings

  This list records alphabetically by title the first published appearance of all of Mina Loy’s known published works which are not included in the present edition. I am not reporting second or later appearances in magazines or anthologies, nor am I distinguishing posthumous works from those published during her lifetime. This distinction can be easily made by the reader; ML died in 1966. The notes on individual texts in Appendix B contain information on the first published appearance of all works included in the main text of this volume.

  Poetry

  “America* A Miracle.” LLB82, pp. 227–31.

  “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose.” The Little Review 9:3 (Spring 1923), pp. 10–18; 9:4 (Autumn/Winter 1923), pp. 41–51; Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers (Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1925), pp. 137–94.

  “Aviator’s Eyes.” Larry Krantz, “Three Neglected Poets,” Wagner Literary Magazine [formerly Nimbus] (Spring 1959), p. 54.

  “Birth of Melody.” LLB82, 241.

  “Brain.” LLB82, p. 257.

  “Breath Bank.” LLB82, p. 254.

  “Brilliant Confusion of Brilliance.” LLB82, p. 234.

  “Ceiling at Dawn.” LLB82, p. 242.

  “Child Chanting.” LLB82, p. 239.

  “Continuity.” LLB82, p. 255.

  “Desert of the Ganges.” LLB82, p. 252.

  “Echo.” LLB82, p. 240.

  “Evolution”. LLB82, p. 256.

  “Hilarious Israel.” Accent 7:2 (Winter 1947), pp. 110–11.

  “I Almost Saw God in the Metro.” LLB82, p. 248.

  “Impossible Opus.” Between Worlds 1:2 (Spring/Summer 1961), pp. 199–200.

  “L’Inavouable Enfant.” LLB82, p. 236.

  “Maiden Song.” LLB82, p. 237.

  “The Mediterranean Sea.” LLB82, pp. 250–51.

  “Mother Earth.” LLB82, p. 253.

  “Negro Dancer.” Between Worlds 1:2 (Spring/Summer 1961), p. 202.

  “Overnight.” LLB82, p. 258.

  “Portrait of a Nun.” LLB82, p. 260.

  “Repassed Platform.” LLB82, p. 249.

  “Revelation.” LBT, pp. 73–74.

  “The Song of the Nightingale Is Like the Scent of Syringa.” LBT, p. 80.

  “Songge Byrd.” LLB82, p. 238.

  “Stravinski’s Flute.” LBT, p. 77.

  “Surfeit of Controversy.” LLB82, p. 232.

  “There Is No Love Alone.” LLB82, p. 233.

  “To Yo
u.” Others 3:1 (July 1916), pp. 27–28.

  “Transformation Scene.” LBT, pp. 78–79.

  “Untitled.” Between Worlds 2:1 (Fall/Winter 1962), p. 27. YCAL MS title is “In Extremis.” Published as “Show Me a Saint Who Suffered” [first line of poem] in LLB82.

  “Vision on Broadway.” LLB82, p. 247.

  “White Petunia.” LLB82, p. 243.

  Prose

  “Colossus” (memoir). Roger L. Conover, “Mina Loy’s Colossus: Arthur Cravan Undressed,” in Dada/Surrealism 14 (1985); reprinted in Rudolf E. Kuenzli, ed., New York Dada (New York: Willis Locker & Owens, 1986), pp. 102–19.

  “Gertrude Stein” (essay). transatlantic review 2:3 (October 1924), pp. 305–9; and transatlantic review 2:4 (November 1924), pp. 427–30.

  “In … Formation” (polemic). Blind Man 1 (April 10, 1917), p. 7.

  Insel (novel). Elizabeth Arnold, ed., with foreword by Roger L. Conover (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1991).

  “John Rodker’s Frog” (response). The Little Review 7:3 (September-December 1920), pp. 56–57.

  “Notes on Religion” (essay fragments). Edited and introduced by Keith Tuma, Sulfur 27 (Fall 1990), pp. 13–16.

  “O Marcel—otherwise I Also Have Been to Louise’s” (vignette). The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), pp. 11–12. Reprinted in View 5:1 (March 1945), p. 35, as “O Marcel: or I Too Have Been to Louise’s,” with an autobiographical note by ML.

  “The Pamperers” (drama). The Dial 69:1 (July 1920), pp. 65–88.

  “Pas de Commentaires! Louis M. Eilshemius” (profile). The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), pp. 11–12.

  “Phenomenon in American Art” (review). LLB82, pp. 300–2.

  Psycho-Democracy (pamphlet). Florence: Tipografia Peri & Rossi, 1920. Reprinted in The Little Review 12 (Autumn 1921), pp. 14–19.

  “Questionnaire” (interview). The Little Review 12:2 (May 1929), p. 46.

  “Street Sister” (fiction). Bronte Adams and Trudi Tate, eds., That Kind of Woman (London: Virago Press, 1991), pp. 41–42.

  “Summer Night in a Florentine Slum” (vignette). Contact 1 (December 1920), pp. 6–7.

  “Towards the Unknown” (questionnaire). View 1 (February/March 1942), p. 10.

  Two Plays [“Collision” and “Cittabapini”] (drama). Rogue 1:6 (June 15, 1915), pp. 15–16.

  Tables of Contents

  LUNAR BAEDEKER

  (Paris: Contact Publishing Co., 1923)

  Poems 1921–1922

  Lunar Baedecker

  Apology of Genius

  Joyce’s Ulysses

  English Rose*

  Crab-Angel

  Der Blinde Junge

  Ignoramus

  Poe

  Brancusi’s Golden Bird

  “The Starry Sky” of Wyndam Lewis

  O Hell

  Poems 1914–1915

  Love Songs (I–XIII)

  Café du Néant

  Magasins du Louvre

  Italian Pictures

  July in Vallombrosa

  The Costa San Giorgio

  Costa Magic

  Sketch of a Man on a Platform

  Parturition

  LUNAR BAEDEKER AND TIME-TABLES

  (Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams Publisher [Jargon 23], 1958)

  I. Poems from LUNAR BAEDEKER (1923)

  Lunar Baedeker

  Apology of Genius

  Joyce’s Ulysses

  Ignoramus

  Brancusi’s Golden Bird

  Crab-Angel

  Love Songs (I–XIII)

  Three Italian Pictures

  I. The Costa San Giorgio

  II. July in Vallombrosa

  III. Costa Magic

  Parturition

  II.* Poems from CONTACT COLLECTION OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS (1925)

  The Anglo-Mystics of the Rose

  Enter Esau

  Ova Begins to take Notice

  Ova has Governesses

  Christ’s Regrettable Reticence

  Religious Instruction

  III. Later Poems

  Revelation

  Omen of Victory

  On Third Avenue: Part 2

  Stravinski’s Flute

  Transformation Scene

  The Song of the Nightingale is Like the Scent of Syringa

  Jules Pascin

  Acknowledgments

  This work is indebted to all Loy scholarship, past and present. My gain from studying Loy criticism has been immense, and I hope that debt will continue to deepen as Loy scholarship develops and matures. There are several scholars whose contributions have been particularly important. I first want to acknowledge the importance of Marisa Januzzi’s work to my own. In many respects, this edition is the result of a collaboration unlike any I have known. Had Marisa not been so generous in sharing her research with me, and so able in arguing points with me, this work would lack much of the integrity I hope it has. The work of Carolyn Burke, Loy’s biographer and steadfast critic, has also mattered to me for many years. I began my work on Loy twenty years ago, at about the same time that Carolyn began hers. She not only understands, but shares my dedication to this poet. I feel a unique bond with her. From my work with both these scholars, community has grown.

  I thank the many graduate students who have written to me about their research on Loy, and the many professors who are now assigning Loy in their classes. They are now too many to mention, but this book was prepared largely with them in mind. Kenneth Fields and Virginia Kouidis wrote their dissertations on Loy at a time when it was even more courageous to do so than it is now. Kouidis’s monograph on Mina Loy was the first book published on the poet and remains a useful introduction to the life and work. I have learned from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s criticism on Loy. More recently, Marjorie Perloff has been writing about Loy; her attention is not only noticed but needed.

  No words can express the value I place on my friendships with Mina Loy’s daughters, Joella Bayer and Fabienne Benedict, nor could my work on Loy have begun or continued in as satisfying a way without them. I miss their husbands, Herbert Bayer and Fritz Benedict, who were always present during our early meetings and who had wonderful stories to relate about “Mama Mina.”

  In the late 1970s I approached Jonathan Williams with a proposal for putting together a centennial edition of Mina Loy’s poems, aware that, twenty years earlier, he was the only publisher in America astute or brave enough to bring out a book of her poems. She was still alive at the time and encouraged him not to be depressed when the book didn’t get the attention he thought it deserved. Without those editions, this one would not exist. Jonathan deserves a medal for his support of lost voices and poetic causes. I hope he sees the publication of this book as a validation of his efforts.

  I would like to thank my editors at Farrar Straus Giroux—Jonathan Galassi, Paul Elie, and Lynn Warshow. I have been in the editing business a long time, but I have learned something new from each of them.

  Poet Thom Gunn is perhaps Mina Loy’s most able reader. I realized this only when we gave a reading together in New York last year. I thank him for his generous suggestions and corrections, and for his own poetry. Jim Powell I have never met, but he is also among the poets, after Kenneth Rexroth and Gunn, who have most consistently advocated for Mina Loy, and among the critics whose readings and e-mail messages I have most benefited from. Jerome Rothenberg and Eliot Weinberger are two others whose support of Loy has made a difference.

  Francis Naumann and Terry Keller know how much they have done to help me in the fine-tuning of this edition. I am extremely grateful to both of them, Terry for her unparalleled vocabulary and Francis for his archive and memory. Michael Barson provided me with answers to several nocturnal questions I could have addressed to no one else. Cita Scott, Martica Sawin, Thomas Redshaw, Joseph Rykwert, Robert Bertholf, and Steven Watson did the same. My interest in and knowlege of poetry owes much to Harry George, who elects to remain an unknown poet but who I hope will one day choose to publish his work, or to prod
uce an edition of the work of Louis Coxe, who taught him. Laurence Cohen solved a number of editorial riddles for me, and Thomas Clayton provided some. I thank them both. Keith Tuma supplied a comment that was most important when I was almost ready to give up on the notes. I have also profited from his writing on Loy. Lisa Jacobs made some unexpected discoveries pertaining to Mina Loy along the way.

  Virginia Conover, John Unterecker, and Donald Hendrie, Jr., are now gone, but will always be in the background of anything I write, as will my sister and brothers, and father, all of whom I treasure. It helped, when I wondered who would be listening, to imagine certain friends reading this book: Sabina Engel, Serge Fauchereau, Kurt Forster, Lyman Gilmore, George Hersey, John Irving, Damon Krukowski, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Irma Romero, Cristina Sanmartin. It also helped to know that other friends would still be there whether I ever finished editing or not, like Kenn Guimond, Jim Sterling, Jack Montgomery, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

  Suzanne Tise knows her contribution.

  Without the cooperation of Patricia Willis, curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at Yale’s Beinecke Library, and her predecessor, Donald Gallup, neither this edition nor my many visits to that fabulous resource would have been as rich.

  * * *

  Now for the magic part. My two sons, Case and Strand, are the deep poetry of my life, and have forgiven me more weekend ski passes and morning soccer practices than I would like to acknowledge in order to complete this book. I hope they know I would rather have been with them. The other magic part: Anna Ginn has been this book’s longest and closest companion. She knows everything about the other woman—Mina Loy—who shares our house, and has participated in the intimate details of this project more than anyone else. She has also been a better editor, critic, fact checker, and proofreader than any I have ever paid. And in much larger ways than these, she has made the completion of this book possible. The simplest words are saved for last, and said with the most love: Thank you, Anna. Thank you, boys.