The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy

A definitive anthology of the poetry of one of America's forgotten modernist poets, a women who shocked even fellow modernists with her technique and choice of subject matter, includes her futurist and feminist satires, the complete cycle of ""Love Songs,"" and other major works.

Roger L. Conover, the editor of this excellent posthumous collection, has done the poetry-reading world quite a favor. Many of these poems originally appeared in long-defunct and nearly forgotten avant-garde journals, and have never before been available in book form. Mina Loy was a favorite of the other modernists (Ezra Pound thought she was as important a writer as William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore), and the energy in her writing is truly impressive. Here's a taste, from "Mexican Desert": "The belching ghost-wail of the locomotive / trailing her rattling wooden tail / into the jazz-band sunset ... " Included here, too, are Loy's essays about poetry, futurism, and feminism.