Mina Loy’s Brancusi’s Golden Bird is a beautifully written, and abstract, poem that describes the art of “Costantin Brancusi…[a] pioneer of abstract sculpture” (Loy 273). Brancusi was French, although born in Romania, and was renowned for his modernist bird statues which became a symbol of the artistic movement at the time (Loy 273). Reading Mina Loy’s poem gives the reader the feeling of look at an abstract sculpture; her lack of punctuation and use of extreme enjambment personify the experience of enjoying one of Brancusi’s sculptures and of its creation. Although lacking punctuation aside from the odd dash Loy does capitalize the first letter of every stanza except for stanza five. This indicates that each stanza, except for five, can stand alone as one complete sentence or thought.
From the start, Loy uses interesting line breaks in her poem: “The toy / become the aesthetic archtype / As if” (ll. 1-3 Loy 273). The reader is already has some feel for the poem from the title, but Loy’s quick shifts in line length pull the reader in as if you are hooked and your eyes are pulled down the page. Loy continues:
Some patient peasant God
had rubbed and rubbed
the Alpha and Omega
of Form
into a lump of metal (ll. 4-8 Loy 273).
Here, Loy first introduces the sculptures rather abstractly; conjuring images of a God –particularly a Grecco-Roman god because of her mention of the Alpha and Omega. Loy even mentions the word form in the first stanza; this refers to both the sculpture and her poem. At this point, without the title, a reader could have an image of what Loy is describing, but this image would be rather distorted and variable.
In the third stanza Loy begins using bird imagery, with words and phrases such as: “unwinged unplumed [sic]”, “of crest and claw”, and “the nucleus of flight” (ll. 9-15 Loy 273). This abstract imagery may conjure the image of birds or flight in some readers.
Stanzas four and five describe the raw power and effect of the art on its viewers and possibly the sculptures themselves. Loy uses assonance and alliteration beautifully throughout these stanzas and uses dashes in line twenty to emphasize the line, “–bare as the brow of Osiris– ”(l. 20 Loy 273). I read this line as a description of the power of the abstract sculptures and art in general. Stanza five is the only stanza that does not hold its own as a complete thought or sentence but is rather a continuation of stanza four. It uses fire or light imagery to create a kind of brightness for a moment in the poem. Loy uses words such as “incandescent”, “flames”, and “reflections” to achieve this (ll. 22-24 Loy 273).
The sixth stanza is equally abstract, discussing the light in stanza five as somehow affecting the sculptures and art in their creation. Loy sees this light as a significant part of the creation of a statue.
Stanza seven is where the sculpture is born:
The immaculate
Conception
Of the inaudible bird
Occurs
in gorgeous reticence … (ll. 31-35 Loy 273).
Here, I believe, Loy is describing Brancusi’s finishing of one of his bird statues. It seems fairly evident with the mentioning of Immaculate Conception. The last line of the poem, “in gorgeous reticence”, beautifully refers to the sculpture’s pureness because of its immaculate conception. Enjambment is used throughout the poem so the reader stumbles down the page, this adds to the abstract feel of the poem.
I very much enjoy this poem and believe Mina Loy did a wonderful job of describing both the sculptures and their creation in a way that is true to the abstract nature of the art. This is modernist art and poetry coupled at its very best.
Loy, Mina. “Mina Loy.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, 3rd Edition: Volume 1, Modern Poetry. Vol. 1. S.l.: Norton, W.W., and, 2003. 273. Print.
I found it interesting that Mina Loy used so many Biblical and mythological allusions to describe this statue, especially if you look at how it influences our understanding of the art itself. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker states that it is “As if / some patient peasant God / had rubbed and rubbed / the Alpha and Omega / of Form (lines 3-7). This image alludes to Jesus in the Book of Revelation (according to the context at the bottom) when he refers to himself as “the alpha and omega,” i.e. the beginning and the end, just as alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. However, the image also seems to refer to Greek myth in the creation of man, where a god-like sculptor “creates” this figure by rubbing it and shaping it, just as man was created from clay by Zeus in the Greek myth. Loy furthers the mythological context of the poem by referencing Osiris, the god of the underworld in Egyptian myth who was reborn as his own son Horus (a bird-headed god) after being torn to pieces by his brother. This interesting reference emphasizes the immortality and refers back to both the creation myth and Jesus, as well as leading toward the “immaculate / conception” (31-2) later stated in the poem. Just as Horus was both the father and son combined, so was Jesus in Christian doctrine. This statue, then, is made to represent a sense of enduring immortality, the miraculous powers of creation (both in art and myth), and the purity of the statue itself in its simple structure.