Poetry Gallery

By Brett DuPuma, English MA

Duquesne University

home page of Loy poetry gallery featuring photo of LoyThe goal of my Poetry Gallery project, using the Omeka platform, was to create a gallery that could aid students in reading Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedecker. Many of the references that Loy makes in the poems are lost to a contemporary audience. Take for instance the Café de Néant mentioned in “Three Moments in Paris.” Although Loy mentions being “Stuck in coffin tables,” it is difficult to imagine what a café with coffins for tables looks like; it is not a common cultural experience today.

This project seeks to provide a visual image to what Loy talks about in her poetry so that readers can have a greater understanding and appreciation for what Loy is doing with her poetry. Ideally, the project can work both pedagogically and for pleasure. It can provide for students background images to help inform their readings while discussing in class. Also, it should inform a Loy reading by having the images gathered in a single place. It is impossible to fully appreciate poetry if somebody does not understand the many allusions and culture of the time. The website collects images from the web that can place the audience in the time period of Mina Loy.

The photos are grouped in three sections that Roger Conover creates in the book and are organized in order of their appearance within each section. Each image comes with a one to two sentence description describing which poem the image is mentioned in and how it relates to the poem