Portrait of a Lady"Parturition" by Mina Loy

Resumen

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 future readership. 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 use of vocabulary in exploring the dynamic creativity of a woman giving birth. "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.