ABSTRACT |
In recent years, the neglected modernist poet Mina Loy (London, 1882;
Aspen, Colorado, 1966) has been rediscovered by a new generation of
readers. Her poems were praised by Ezra Pound (he coined the term
“logopoeia” to describe them) and admired and eagerly read by many
others such as William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane and E.E. Cummings.
However, printed in little magazines or published by small publishing
houses, Loy’s work was lost to later reading audiences, perhaps because
she did not publish anything between 1931 and 1944. My aim in the
present paper is to analyze some of Loy’s thematic and formal
innovations in the poem “Parturition” such as its subject matter, its
visual aspects, the use of simultaneity and juxtaposition as composition
principles, and the vocabulary chosen to explore the dynamic creativity
of a woman giving birth, as well as to recreate the maternal body.
“Parturition,” published in Trend in 1914, was the first poem
ever written about the physical experience of giving birth from the
parturient woman’s point of view, detailing an area of femaleness rarely
thought suitable for literature.
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