Laying Out the Exiled Body: Notes on the Spatial Structure of Mina Loy’s “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose” (original) (raw)
Mina Loy's poem "Anglo-Mongrel and the Rose," both in its sections and its entirety, is decentered in its semantic structure leaving numerous gaps in the textual mesh. On the printed page, the poem clearly shows visible spaces between words. These spases may be seen as an element in the set of visual peculiarities of the poem. In general, these spatial and visual features take the place of conventional punctuations. If it may be assumed that punctuation represents the suprasegmental aspects of spoken language, it may also be understood that punctuation operates under the same linearity as speech, which characterizes patriarchy. Thus, it can be concluded that the visual and spatial features represent the general breaking away from linearity and therefore also patriarchal language. While the language of the Law regulates the symbolic function, the chora lays out the field for the body to dance in. In Loy’s “Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose” spaces between words and lines indicate that the poem operates within the semiotic function allowed by the spaces provided by the chora. In conventional syntax, words occupy a one-dimensional line which uncompromisingly regulate words into a series. The spaces in this particular poem of Loy’s—not many show this characteristic\—open additional levels of space into which the word can slip out of linearity and obtain a oblique relationship with other words in the poem, revealing a visually apparent collocative and associative relationship.
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