Mina Loy's Moreover, The Moon

Mina Loy’s futurist, unconventional free verse poem, “Moreover, The Moon,” (1982, The Last Lunar Baedeker) exposes the oppressive and controlling nature of the patriarchy on women’s lives and argues that women cannot truly be, or even know, themselves while this social institution maintains so much power over them. The poet develops these themes by first demonstrating that the patriarchy holds an inordinate presence through personifying it as “the moon” in the title and “face of the skies”; second, by outlining it in an adverse way through creative diction and descriptive phrases, such as “truant of heaven,” and “draw us under”, which suggests tidal imagery and alludes to the moon’s control over waves; third, by detailing the patriarchy’s eternal and everlasting qualities even among images of death and disease, such as “corpse”, “decease”, and
Although the speaker, a woman who understands the abuses of the patriarchy, maintains a resigned tone as she repeats the idea that the patriarchy would always be present, there are some areas, such as “inverse dawn”, “circular corpse”, and “decease”, in which she hints at a possible demise by illustrating images of the moon waning or setting; thus, the poem shifts to suggest that the oppression of women could end if only they seek to define themselves outside of the moon’s shadow. Originally part of the Italian Futurism movement, Loy later joined the feminist movement as a response to the futurist’s misogynistic attitudes, allowing her to focus on the theme of empowering women through self-knowledge, exemplified by the earnest portrayal of patriarchal culture and marginalized, powerless women in her poem, “Moreover, The