Subject: RE: Mina Loy and the QHU
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:46:04 -0500


I have wondered about this myself, and once after reading Wallace Stevens' "Peter Quince at the Clavier," I began to suspect that she was making a sound allusion to the poem (though now as I look at the passage, I don't see the connection--it sounds more Steinese that Stevensien).  I put in a query to Roger Conover, who said that, although many critics have speculated, so far no one has been able to make a convincing claim that "Q H U" has any specific referent or meaning.

Let me know if you develop any compelling theories.

best,

Suzanne

___________________________

Suzanne W. Churchill
Associate Professor of English
Davidson College


> ----------
> From: 	Lesley Hall
> Reply To: 	modernism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Sent: 	Tuesday, February 4, 2003 3:04 PM
> To: 	Modernism List
> Subject: 	Fw: Mina Loy and the QHU
> 
> This query came up on another list and I thought the expertise to answer it might be here... Any suggestions welcome:
>  
> A colleague has asked me the following question to which I had no answer. Is there anyone who can help?
> 
> Mina Loy begins poem no XIX of the > '> Songs to Joannes> '>  (1917), included in Roger R. Conover (Ed),  The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Poems of Mina Loy, New York 1996, as follows:
> "> Nothing so conserving
> As cool cleaving
> Note of the Q H U
> Clear carving
> Breath-giving
> Pollen smelling 
> Space> "> 
> The poem has a sexual innuendo. What remains unclear is the meaning of > '> Q H U> ">  Any suggestions?
> 
>  
>  
> Lesley Hall
> lesleyah-AT-primex.co.uk
> website http://www.lesleyahall.net
>  
>