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LOY from page 8
Mina no longer worried about convention, sleeping in her robe on the sofa and showing no concern for housekeeping. She no longer complained about living in poverty.
In 1944 Fabi married Hans Fraenkel, and for awhile Mina lived with the couple in their two-story brownstone on East Sixty-sixth Street, but by 1949 she was living alone in rooming houses writing and creating three-dimensional collages from garbage she gathered in the streets and allies.
…The surrounding streets were inhabited by Sicilians, and it was said that the area was under the control of the Mafia. (To Mina)…the derelicts were fellow humans down on their luck. Used to seeing groups of men slumped in doorways, passing cheap wine in paper bags, or stretched out on the sidewalk, Mina…pronounced them harmless… From Mina's perspective, the bums represented her lifelong fear of 'outcasting.' To most people they were human wreckage, indistinguishable in their grime degradation, but in her eyes they were individuals with habits and histories. (Becoming Modern, p.411-412)
Mina's years on Stanton Street seemed to bring her some peace. Her room filled with rags, bottles, clothespins, and egg crates was her gallery. She had young working-class friends who admired her and treated her as the Duchess. One of these friends "thought of Mina as 'a dear strong woman and a loyal friend, with courage and integrity,' who taught him to see the beauty in their shabby neighborhood." (Becoming Modern, P.416) For example one day she showed him the many shades of red hidden in the gray surroundings. "Mina found treasures in things others thought sordid, … like the spirituality in the haggard faces of the bums. She saw what others never noticed." (Becoming Modern, p.417)
While Mina lived in her own world of the Bowery, her daughters' lives were rapidly changing. After her 1942 divorce, Joella married Austrian artist Herbert Bayer in 1944
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and moved to Aspen, Colorado. During a 1948 visit to Aspen, Fabi, by then separated from Fraenkel, was introduced to architect Fritz Benedict, and decided to relocate to Aspen as well. Her marriage to Benedict followed. However, it was 1953 before the girls could get Mina to Aspen, only then by saying it was a temporary arrangement to see how she liked it. After a period of adjustment she did. The miners' cottages with Victorian gingerbread and stained glass caught her fancy, as did the winter sunlight. As the years advanced and her health declined, Mina continued to receive visitors, having been rediscovered as a modernist poet worthy of attention. She read her poetry to guests, gave interviews, and generally rediscovered self-confidence. She died of pneumonia on September 25, 1966.
Mina Loy's poetry reflected the chronology of her life. Her writings were experimental employing verbal and visual techniques to express her philosophies and passions. She was part of the modernist revolution in poetry seen as too radical for some editors, but praised by literary figures like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. In 1910 she wrote a thirty-four-poem montage about disillusioned love, but her greatest influence in poetry was felt between 1914 and 1925. She wrote an unpublished play, "The Sacred Prostitute," (circa 1914), the pamphlet Psycho-Democracy (1920), and several poems published in the Little Review (1920 issues), all reflective of her conversion to Futurism, which like Christian Science, fostered positive thinking. Along with the Little Review, the Dial was the other principal conveyor of Loy's work in the 1920s, publishing two of her watercolors, a drawing, and an experimental play "The Pamperers" as well as her poetry. Her work appeared in other American magazines such as Camera Work, Trend, Rogue, and Others. Loy's other major contribution in the 1920s was a long autobiographical
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