Cultures of Modernism: Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, and Else Lasker-Schüler. Gender and Literary Community in New York and Berlin (review)

Framed by the argument that “location matters” in the interpretation of modernist poetry, Miller’s monograph is an interesting and approachable read, striking a balance between cultural studies and poetic analysis. It is a critical source useful to audiences in both fields, as readers find population statistics and descriptions of sexologists’ theories alongside contemporary reviews and careful dissections of the underanalyzed poetry of American Marianne Moore, English (yet mongrel) Mina Loy, and the German Else Lasker-Schüler. Miller posits that “Failing to understand the locational basis of theoretical constructions leads to inappropriate generalization,” and this study aims to reevaluate certain generalizations through a structured analysis of naming acts, the performance of poetic bodies, and the use and influence of Judaism on the poetry of Moore, Loy, and Lasker-Schüler (3). These considerations are set against the cultural implications of the Berlin and New York locations, which include access to education, constructions of gendered and national identity, and the artistic/literary movements situated in these two modernist cities. Miller continues the process of reevaluating modernist female writers on their own terms, through their published and unpublished writing, and is therefore innovative in her approach to what it means to be a female poet in New York, Berlin, or in the case of Loy, several cities in-between, during the early part of the twentieth century. Though the focus of the study is mainly on the three aforementioned poets, their work is contextualized within American modernism and the Berlin expressionist movement. William Carlos Williams does not figure heavily in the analysis, but is referenced about ten times regarding the American modernist movement and Mina Loy’s place therein. Miller disagrees with the classification of Loy as an American modernist, and this work attempts to correct that misconception along with others, such as the omission of Moore from the international discussion of modernism, and the ways in which Lasker-Schüler has been ignored by comparativists.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus,” Miller examines how “location matters,” determining what creative setting or working conditions were available to a woman writer in Berlin versus those of New York, and what specific cultural differences created the resulting variances in the two locations. Whereas by the turn of the twentieth century men enjoyed approximately the same rights and advantages across North America and Europe, women’s experience remained largely diversified. Both cities were important sites of modernism, but each offered completely different social and working atmospheres for women. Miller explains, for example, the varied female presence in Berlin’s streets and the resulting ambiguous meanings: because women had been prohibited from meeting in public prior to 1908, a young unaccompanied woman in the streets of Berlin had either moved there to work, and was thus taking advantage of the newly constructed department store or movie theatre, or she was a prostitute. In comparison, the female presence in New York streets was slightly less ambiguous or distracting to male city dwellers. The differently coded meanings of female presence in the city’s streets are just one example of how a writer’s location affected her self-perception and artistic creation.

Readers learn more about the poets’ self-perception in “Gender Crossings Ova, Rat, & the Prince of Thebes,” as Moore, Loy, and Lasker-Schüler, like the majority of their modernist contemporaries, participated in numerous naming acts for themselves and others. These names, however, were “not a matter of disguise or pseudonym,” but were used with profound symbolic meaning, as demonstrated by Miller (66). Mina Lowy transformed to Mina Loy around 1904, and used various anagrammatic constructions (Nima Lyo, Anim Yol, and Imna Oly) along with Gina, Ova, Maraquita, Daniel, Goy, and Doosie, according to her geographic location and as a response to “patriarchal definitions of the feminine” (73). Both Moore...