Mina Loy

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ML is best known for her formally and thematically innovative free verse, which appeared in little magazines in the 1910s and 1920s. She later distanced herself from this free verse movement, with which she was so strongly associated, claiming: My poetry had nothing to do with that movement.
qtd. in
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
381
Instead, she turned to writing verse as one feels: I tried to forget that I had ever in my life read anything & see if I could let out that natural expression that must be innate to all mankind.
qtd. in
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
381
In addition to her free verse, ML wrote prose, including manifestoes, autobiography, and a novel, but very little of this was published during her lifetime. She also produced a wide range of visual art throughout her life; she asserted: The two, writing and painting, go together with me.
qtd. in
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
376
  • BirthName: Mina Gertrude Lowy
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    15

  • Self-constructed: Mina Loy
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    97
    Her biographer Carolyn Burke notes that ML offered many different explanations about why she adopted Loy as surname. She first used the name in 1904, shortly after her marriage to Stephen Haweis, when she exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. She once said that she used Loy instead of Haweis in a spirit of mockery, in place of that of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of England.
    qtd. in
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    97
    Burke notes ML 's discomfort with her birth name and suggests that dropping the w allowed the spelling to match the pronunciation which her mother had adopted in an attempt to make the name sound less foreign. Other explanations from ML included that she had first seen the name on a shop in Munich; once she was living in Paris, she would say that she was a law (loi) unto herself.
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    97
  • Married: Haweis
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    88
    ; Lloyd
    Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
    242, 257

Milestones

27 December 1882

Mina Gertrude Lowy (later ML ) was born in Hampstead.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
15, 18

June 1914

ML 's first known published work, Aphorisms on Futurism, appeared in Camera Work under the name Mina Loy.
Loy, Mina. “Introduction and Notes”. The Lost Lunar Baedeker, edited by Roger L. Conover, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
215
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
169

October 1914

ML 's free-verse poem Parturition appeared in The Trend.
Loy, Mina. “Introduction and Notes”. The Lost Lunar Baedeker, edited by Roger L. Conover, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
176

25 September 1966

ML died of pneumonia in Aspen, Colorado.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
439-40

Biography

Birth and Family

27 December 1882

Mina Gertrude Lowy (later ML ) was born in Hampstead.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996.
15, 18