Poetry and Work
Loy's extremely original poems started to frequent smaller magazines such as Rogue, attracting the attention of the New York avant-garde. Once her work started to gain momentum, she began to publish poems and articles in more significant New York publications. In 1914, "Aphorisms on Futurism" was published in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work. "Parturition", her graphic depiction of childbirth, was printed in Trend.
In July 1915, Loy began to write what would be later known as "Songs to Joannes" "(originally "Love songs"), a collection of modernist, avant-garde love poetry about her disenchantment with Giovanni Papini, another founding Futurist with whom Loy had been in a romantic relationship in Florence. First readers of "Songs to Joannes" were shocked by Loy's forward expressions of sexuality, particularly the grotesque and uncensored depictions of erotic desire and bodily functions.
In 1918, Loy penned her polemical Feminist Manifesto, at least partly in response to the misogyny of Futurism's founder, F. T. Marinetti.
Read more about this topic: Mina Loy
Famous quotes containing the words poetry and/or work:
“There is nothing more poetic than the truth. He who does not see poetry in it will always be a poor versifier outside of it.”
—Multatuli [Eduard Douwer Dekker] (1820–1887)
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in “playing” chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)