The Lost Lunar Baedeker (13 page)

Williams will make a poem of a bare fact—just show you something he noticed. The doctor wishes you to know just how uncompromisingly itself that fact is. But the poet would like you to realize all that it means to him, and he throws that bare fact onto paper in such a way that it becomes a part of Williams' own nature as well as the thing itself. That is the new rhythm.

Preceptors of Childhood

or
The Nurses of Maraquita

I. Lilah

Lilah was pale, and Maraquita loved her. She read her “Peep of Day,” a pretty book about a pretty man, that made her cry.

Maraquita's introduction to crying without being hurt for it.

Lilah and Maraquita understood each other perfectly.

They read “Peep of Day” all over again, and the sauce of the “Last Supper” tasted of tears.

And Lilah wore a brooch of pale pink coral rose-buds, cool to the fingers.…

One day Maraquita threw a domino through the window-pane, and was punished by Mamma.

And after the psychic concussion, she was still alive.

… And Lilah was still there—and once she had been governess in a jewish family in Hungary.

And in Hungary you buried medlars under trees and dug them up when they were rotten.

And a cavalry officer had galloped after the beautiful daughter of the family—and rode her down—because she was a jewess.

So the world grew bigger than it had been … and Maraquita wondered where the domino went to, and she felt lonely, like the pretty man on the wooden cross.

And Lilah had kind soft hands, but not very useful … and Maraquita was never going to set any store by useful things again.

Lilah one morning wasn't there any more … Maraquita wondered what it was about mornings, that made her wake up.

II. Queenie

She had large eyes.

Maraquita feeling affectionate called her Black-beetle.

And “Black-beetle,” who hadn't lost all her fun yet, let her.

But after a few more months had happened to her, she would rather Maraquita called her “Queenie.”

Maraquita supposed she wanted to be called that way, because she hoped Victoria would die.

She liked grand funerals.

But Victoria wouldn't die.

And nothing happened.

She was very clever at finding streets.

All the streets were the same—bare and buff.

Sometimes a richer house would have pillars painted a dull red.

The more streets they saw—the less they had to say.

“Next week will come Good Friday,” said Maraquita at the corner of Blenheim Terrace.

And after an hour and a half—they got back to the corner of Blenheim Terrace.

And Queenie answered. “Yes, next week will come Good Friday.”

III. Nicky

Nicky was the governess that Mamma loved.

She was very good.

Her breath was damp on the back of your neck over lessons, and the gold tassel on her watch chain tickled.

Nicky could sharpen pencils as fine as a needle.

And she drew narcissi with them, shading them till they shone.

Maraquita respected her for it.

This was the only respect from Maraquita she was ever going to get.

Her forehead was too high, and her square red fringe wouldn't flatten to it.

Her face was spotted with sunrust.

Her nose was flat, and pinkly turned up at the tip.

Her teeth were yellow.

Her eyelashes were white.

Her sleeves were too short, and red hairs grew among the freckles above her wrists.

Her ears were flannelly!

She wore a brown velvet waistcoat to a plaid dress with glass buttons that rucked on her virgin bosom.

She was very good.

She only made Maraquita feel very sick.

She prayed at leather chairs in the morning, in the morning room.

And Maraquita curdled with shame for conversing with something she couldn't see.

And the coal-heaver outside was quite likely to look in.

Nicky lived in fearful conspiracy with Mamma for two years.

Twenty-four months of unbearable biliousness.

Maraquita grew very thin.

They gave her porridge—with lumps in it.

Maraquita didn't want it.

They gave her cod-liver oil.

For was she not the child of parents who never stinted of buying anything that was all for the best for her?

And it was best to go to bed early.

Maraquita went to bed at 7 o'clock, and Nicky was so good.

She sat outside the bedroom door—forever—with an open Bible, under the gas jet—so that Maraquita shouldn't play.

Maraquita knew very well what should be done with Nicky.

Nicky, who was so blushfully buttoned up, should be quite undressed and thrown into a cage of Lions; she should be married to a lion—and have children with Lion's manes and Nicky's freckles.

Then again Maraquita felt the damp breath down the back of her neck—and the lions ROARED and their claws scratched.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

And it was beter Maraquita should go to school in the country—she was getting very thin.

Auto-Facial-Construction

The face is our most potent symbol of personality.

The adolescent has facial contours in harmony with the conditions of his soul. Day by day the new interests and activities of modern life are prolonging the youth of our souls, and day by day, we are becoming more aware of the necessity for our faces to express that youthfulness, for the sake of psychic logic. Different systems of beauty culture have compromised with our inherent right, not only to “be ourselves” but to “look like ourselves”, by producing a facial contour in middle age, which does duty as a “well preserved appearance”. This preservation of partially distorted muscles, is, at best, merely a pleasing parody of youth. That subtle element of the ludicrous inherent in facial transformation by time, is the signpost of discouragement pointing along the path of the evolution of personality. For to what end is our experience of life, if deprived of a fitting aesthetic revelation in our faces? One distorted muscle causes a fundamental disharmony in self-expression, for no matter how well gowned or groomed men or women may be, how exquisitely the complexion is cared for, or how beautiful the expression of the eyes, if the original form of the face (intrinsic symbol of personality) has been effaced in muscular transformation, they have lost the power to communicate their true personalities to others and all expression of sentiment is veiled in pathos. Years of specialized interest in physiognomy as an artist, have brought me to an understanding of the human face, which has made it possible for me to find the basic principle of facial integrity, its conservation, and when necessary, reconstruction.

I will instruct men or women who are intelligent and for the briefest period, patient, to become masters of their facial destiny. I understand the skull with its muscular sheath, as a sphere whose superficies can be voluntarily energised. And the foundations of beauty as embedded in the three interconnected zones of energy encircling this sphere: the centres of control being at the base of the skull and highest point of the cranium. Control, through the identity of your conscious will, with these centres and zones, can be perfectly attained through my system, which does not include any form of cutaneous hygiene, (the care of the skin being left to the skin specialists) except in as far as the stimulus to circulation it induces, is of primary importance in the conservation of all the tissues. Through Auto-Facial-Construction the attachments of the muscles to the bones are revitalised, as also the gums, and the original facial contours are permanently preserved as a structure which can be relied upon without anxiety as to the ravages of time. A structure which complexion culture enhances in beauty, instead of attempting to disguise.

This means renascence for the society woman, the actor, the actress, the man of public career, for everybody who desires it. The initiation to this esoteric anatomical science is expensive, but economical in result; for it places at the disposal of individuals, a permanent principle for the independent conservation of beauty to which, once it is mastered, they have constant and natural resource.

APPENDICES

Loy, ca. 1920, Man Ray photograph (Collection Roger L. Conover)

Editorial Guidelines and Considerations

One of the aims of this edition is to establish a text for an elusive body of work by this century's most significant critically unrecognized modern poet.
A
text, but not
the
text, for as the poet and her work came into sharper focus, the idealized goal with which I began seemed perpetually to recede. When I started this project, I imagined arriving at one set of principles by which all editorial questions could be resolved. I imagined producing a definitive text, revealing the poet's intention for the posthumous publication of her work. But for anyone who knows the Mina Loy file and the history of ambiguous and unstable features surrounding her publications, the idea of determining a definitive text is wishful at best.

This recognition in no way lessens the responsibility to produce a reliable text; in fact, it underscores the importance of doing so and argues for the adoption of conservative editorial procedures which do not further destabilize the texts. At the same time, it acknowledges the textual impurities already there and the risk of introducing further impurities even as we try to keep our controls clean.

Consider the first three sections of this volume. For nearly two-thirds of the thirty-four poems, no manuscripts or page proofs have yet been found. We have only the published record, and we have to concede the fallibility of that record, even as we find ourselves relying on it, exclusively in many cases, as the
sine qua non
of our text. Many of Mina Loy's poems appeared in magazines that were not proofread; many poems were never even typewritten, but sent in handwritten form to friends, who then typed them up and sent them off to editors. Her first book was typeset by compositors who could not read English, let alone distinguish errors from experiments. If its publisher could let it go to press with its title misspelled, what would the complete corrigenda look like? There is no manuscript. We will never know.

An image, then: invisible texts behind texts, lost spellings behind corrections, secret erasures behind revisions. No edition can do full justice to this archaeology. One can only clean up the site. I believe that Mina Loy understood something about the dubious nature of textual production and the anxiety of authorship well before Roland Barthes announced the death of the author and Michel Foucault evoked an authorless world. Loy conceptualized authorial erasure long before “theory” did:

unauthorized by the present

these letters are left authorless—

have lost all origin

.   .   .   .   .   .   .

The hoarseness of the past

creaks

from erased leaves

covered with unwritten writing

since death's erasure

of the writer — —

—“Letters of the Unliving”

In the absence of authoritative texts for many poems and printer's copies of manuscripts for all the poems, not to mention the lack of collections published during Loy's career, editorial discretion was required in developing this text. I have tried to balance what I know of the poet and her habits with the conventions of textual practice and with other poets', editors', and critics' reading of dubious passages. I adopted certain principles, but I have applied them flexibly. Specific problems are resolved not by
a priori
rules but on their own terms. It is necessary, for example, to arbitrate spelling in local contexts, rather than assuming that Loy always spelled a particular word the same way. Imposing a dictionary's uniform standard on her polyglot handling of the English language would distort the surface of her work. And yet there are times when patent spelling errors require correction. Not only does she frequently employ foreign and archaic words as if they belong to colloquial English usage, but her English maximizes heterographic and orthographic opportunities to create puns.

The textual notes follow the order in which the poems appear in this book. Each poem has its own note, and each note is prefixed by an entry which provides the following information: title; date of composition, if known; authorized initial publication, if any; location of manuscript, if known; copy-text followed for this edition; emendations to the copy-text. Emendations are keyed by line to the poem. Some entries also offer definitions of obscure or archaic terminology.

In most cases, this note is followed by an Editor's Note. My attempt in writing these notes was not to provide bibliographic or biographical information that is widely known, nor to offer critical refractions on every poem, but rather to establish Loy's work within the literary and historical contexts in which she wrote. The notes are especially intended for those pursuing further studies on Loy. For that reason, I often make reference to Loy's own comments concerning a particular poem, and to the comments or work of other editors or critics. The notes often contain information on the circumstances of a poem's initial publication, editorial transmission, or critical reception. Many notes offer social, historical, or cultural background. Others contain speculative or anecdotal information. The notes are never intended to preempt the text, to provide complete annotations, or to be read alone, but rather to provide readers with ideas, contexts, and sources to explore on their own.