Poetic Salvage

Reading Mina Loy

Tara Prescott

2017
292 pages
ISBN 9781611488128

Mina Loy - poet, artist, exile, and luminary - was a prominent and admired figure in the art and literary circles of Paris, Florence, and New York in the early years of the twentieth century. But over time, she gradually receded from public consciousness and her poetry went out of print. As part of the movement to introduce the work of this cryptic poet to modern audiences, Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy provides new and detailed explications of Loy's most redolent poems. This book helps readers gain a better understanding of the body of Loy's work as a whole by offering compelling close readings that uncover the source materials that inspired Loy's poetry, including modern artwork, Baedeker travel guides, and even long-forgotten cultural venues. Helpfully keyed to the contents of Loy's Lost Lunar Baedeker, edited by Roger Conover, this book is an essential aid for new readers and scholars alike. Mina Loy forged a legacy worthy of serious consideration - through a practice best understood as salvage work, of reclaiming what has been so long obscured. Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy dives deep to bring hidden treasures to the surface.

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Reviews

"Prescott's Poetic Salvage wants to ease the agitation of Loy's audience, to offer, wherever possible, 'an in-depth exploration of Loy's imaginary words and worlds'...Ultimately, it is precisely because of this established, celebrated lineage of close reading that Prescott can be certain that her work is a welcome addition to Loy studies, as it assuredly is."
- Modern Language Review, Vol. 115, Part I, 2020

"Loy's life and her relationships with some of the most important figures of modernism have fascinated many, but it is not until fairly recently that her extraordinary writing has received as much attention as her extraordinary life. Tara Prescott's Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy, one of only a few book-length studies focused on the writer, helps to correct that omission. Noting that the hallmark of Loy's poetry is her esoteric and daring diction, Prescott announces that her aim is "to help readers gain access to Loy's poetry by investigating the nature of these words, the source materials that inspired them, and the ways in which these unusual words are a part of Loy's aesthetic." Prescott's Poetic Salvage delivers on this promise: it's a wonderfully clear and precise set of close readings and contextualizations of Loy's unruly work."
- Jacquelyn Ardam, Colby College; Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2017

About the author:

Tara Prescott is a lecturer in writing programs at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Distributed by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Paperback: 9781611488142; eBook: 9781611488135