SOURCE: "The New Poetry and the New Woman: Mina Loy," in Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom, The University of Michigan Press, 1985, pp. 37-57.

In the following excerpt, Burke places Loy's poetry, in particular her "Three Moments in Paris" and Love Songs, within the American feminist movement.

Soon after her arrival in New York for the first time (1916), Mina Loy was contacted by a newspaper reporter who wanted to interview a representative "new woman." The reporter began her article by asking, "Who is … this 'modern woman' that people are always talking about," then reflected, "Some people think that women are the cause of modernism, whatever that is." Loy's name had been suggested because of her radically modern poetry: already published in such avant-garde magazines as Camera Work, Rogue, and The Trend, she was known as the...