Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy

Thirty years after her death, Mina Loy (1882-1966) remains the most obscure of the great modernist poets-a public scandal in the New York of the 1910s, a forgotten literary innovator soon afterward. Burke, a pioneering scholar in the rediscovery of Loy, has written the first comprehensive biography of this intriguing figure. She draws on interviews and Loy's private papers to illuminate some of the murkier years of the poet's glamorous life, especially her final reclusive years and her Victorian English girlhood. After coming to America in 1916, Loy helped invent the techniques of American modernist poetry, hobnobbing with fellow poets Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams as well as with painters such as Marcel Duchamp. Her outrageously witty, often obscene verse had a decisive role in the development of modern poetry. Burke follows Loy's wanderings from Greenwich Village to Mexico, from Paris to Aspen, turning up plenty of good stories and delightful gossip. The author does not spend much of the book reading Loy's poetry, interpreting it strictly as coded autobiography. But this story should make anyone interested in literature curious to investigate the work of this brilliant poet. An important contribution to a neglected corner of modern literary history. Photos not seen by PW. (July) ~ FYI: FSG will concurrently publish a selection of Loy's poetry, The Lost Lunar Baedeker.