Mina's Blog

Mina Loy was a number of things. She was an artist, a poet, a feminist, and a modernist, among many other things ("Mina Loy"). Though she is now remembered as a poet, during her life she never claimed the name of a poet. She saw herself more as an artist than anything.

Loy was born in London on December 27th, in 1882 ("Mina Loy"), and died on September 25th, 1966, in Aspen, Colorado. During Loy’s years in Paris she attended an art school and was influenced by a 19th century art movement called impressionism (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mina Loy").

Loy moved to Germany to study art, and then back to Paris. In Paris she married another art student, Stephen Haweis. Later they moved to the United States. Loy and Haweis eventually got divorced and she re-married Arthur Cravan, a boxer, who disappeared (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mina Loy").

Loy’s works were very feminist. She was very direct about the things she wrote. Magazines that published her work admired her poetry for exactly this reason. She directly handled things such as sex and childbirth. Many poets didn’t dare do things like this, setting her apart and making her different and people admired her for these poems. Loy wrote an expansion of “Love Songs”, which she called “Songs of Joanna”. In “Songs of Joanne” she wanted women to free themselves from the dependance they have on men (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mina Loy").

Aside from being an artist and a poet, Loy was a great artist. Aside from that she was also a mother. With her first husband she has a girl who died briefly after her first birthday. Her and Haweis separated and Loy had an affair with a doctor who had treated her for depression. After this affair ended she realized she was pregnant with the doctor’s baby ("The Mina Loy Mysteries"). She and Haweis got back together so her could play the role as father to the baby, soon she became pregnant again, with Haweis child. After divorcing Haweis and meeting her second husband who was the love of her life ("The Mina Loy Mysteries"), she mothered his child, and he went missing. The son she had with her first husband died of cancer in the bahamas ("The Mina Loy Mysteries"). Being a mother, and experiencing the life she did gave her the insight she needed to write about the things previously mentioned. Had she not experienced these things, she couldn't have so directly written her free verse poems.

Loy, focusing on art, novel writing, and poetry, was very accomplished in Paris, and in New York. She thrived on feminist writing (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mina Loy"), and her works were original, admired, and showed her intelligence ("Mina Loy") and her experiences.

In her later years of life Loy moved from New York to Colorado to live with her daughters until she died. After Loy died a complete collection of her works was published in 1982. This collection was called “The Last Lunar Baedeker”. Throughout her life, Loy achieved quite a lot. She was an artist, a poet, a mother, and she had moved to Germany, and back to Paris, and from Paris to the United States and Back multiple times. Loy had published many works in her lifetime ("Loy Chronology”).