Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966), was a British

artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, futurist, feminist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She
was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her
poetry was admired by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting,Gertrude
Stein, Francis Picabia and Yvor Winters, among others.This poem describes a sculpture made
by the artist Constantin Brancusi titled “Golden Bird.” Brancusi is considered to be one of the
most influential pioneers of modernism in the 20th century. “Golden Bird” displayed in the Art
Institute of Chicago The Bible refers to God as the potter who forms creation with his hands
in the same way that a potter forms clay with his hands. This bit of the poem speaks of the
creator of the sculpture and paints a picture of the sculptor as a god over his creation,
working to form it into the creation is eventually becomes.

The toy
become the aesthetic archetype

As if
some patient peasant God
had rubbed and rubbed
the Alpha and Omega
of Form
into a lump of metal

A naked orientation
unwinged and unplumed
—the ultimate rhythm
has lopped the extremities
of crest and claw
from
the nucleus of flight

The absolute act

of art
conformed
to continent sculpture
—bare as the brow of Osiris—
this breast of revelation

an incandescent curve
licked by chromatic flames
in labyrinths of reflections

1
This gong
of polished hyperaesthesia
shrills with brass
as the aggressive light
strikes
its significance

The immaculate
conception
of the inaudible bird
occurs
in gorgeous reticence . . .