Costa Magic...

"Costa Magic" by Mina Loy has to be the strangest and most interesting poem from what I read in this packet so far.  It's abstract and maintains a haunting tone at the same time. I believe the haunting tone is maintain throughout the prose because of words such as "Mumbling at the window/ Malediction/ Incantation". These words being used places the audience in a supernatural mood but occurs in an ordinary place and time.  It’s easy not to get wrapped up in the mystery as our speaker, a woman eavesdropping on her husband, gains a limited amount of information. Consequentially, we as the reader gain limited pieces of information. We at the same time experience the unsettling idea of not knowing what exactly is happening.

Despite myself gaining a limited understanding of the emotional toil of our speaker, the poem remains abstract. The poem reliance on sound, motion and time throughout makes the poem futuristic. In the second stanza, we encounter the word “SPLOSH” in capitalize letters that completely interrupts the initial mood and rhythm of the poem. Next, Loy creates this idea of time pasting by spacing out the word “daily”. Now it is indicated to the reader that our speaker’s experience is not made into one single incident but ongoing. The poem becomes futuristic by constantly placing the supernatural, which invokes the idea of the past, with technology. A poem that  uses words like “bewitch” and “cab” is odd. In fact the last couple of stanza are about Cesira, our speaker’s daughter, turning into a beast but this emergence to prevent this magical transformation occurring in a car. The supernatural is made meddlesome and bad. However, the technological advantages are helpful to our speaker. These features of these opposite entities highlights one of the futurist ideas, that we as a civilization must move forward.

Loy is overall abstract but it emphasizes motion, technology and pasting of time.