Mina Loy and the Function of the Autobiographical: Revisiting the Long Poem ‘Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose.'

The article revisits the two initial sections of Mina Loy’s modernist long poem “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose,” the earliest in its publication history and best known, to show the dynamics of the constitution of the narrative self in relation to the genealogical family. By destabilizing their positions through poetic techniques, pointing to larger socio-historical subjectivizing structures, Loy may be read as commenting on how to construct the self “despite the weight of family history.” Moreover, it leads us beyond referential autobiographical reading and toward seeing “Anglo-Mongrels” as a poetic meta-autobiography of a specifically circumscribed gendered self at this particular time and place within modernity. This reading of the poem is performed within the context of Mina Loy’s scholarly reception vis a vis auto/biographical studies.