alphabets that build themselves

gif of letter blocks

Language is kinetic, geometric, recombinant, and open to mutation. Loy understood this. Do we yet understand this? May we not yet split alphabetic characters and take up meaning-making in all of its geometries of possibility? Loy imagined a toy that is a poem—a poem in the hand—that could lead us into language so that we could grasp (hold!) its concrete relation to nature, to the world of force, weight, and dimension. If you are curious (hold your curiosity, love your curiosity) read about “Prototyping Mina Loy’s Alphabet” at Feminist Modernist Studies (Taylor & Francis https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfmd20)