Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations

A silver LuciferLunar Baedeker...Lucifer A Baedeker is a series name of popular guidebooks. Another modern poem with “Baedeker” in the title is T. S. Eliot’s “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” (1919). Lucifer is the former angel name for Satan, which has been used to name the morning star, that is the planet Venus

serves

cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists

of adolescent thighs

draped

in satirical draperies

PerisPeris “In Persian myth, an elf or fairy, male or female, represented as a descendant of fallen angels, excluded from Paradise till their penance is accomplished” (Century Dictionary) in liveryin livery Dressed for their job

prepare

LetheLethe River of forgetfulness in Hades

for posthumous parvenuesparvenues Those who have recently come into wealth

Delirious Avenues

lit

with the chandelier souls

of infusoriainfusoria Class of protozoa; “so called because found in infusions of decaying animal or vegetable matter” (OED)

from Pharoah’s tombstones

lead

to mercurial doomsdaysdoomsdays The end of the world or Judgment Day, usually in the singular

Odious oasis

in furrowed phosphorousphosphorous “Phosphorous” (with a capital “P”) is Venus, the morning star, archaically referred to as Lucifer, mentioned in the first line of this poem.

the eye-white sky-light

white-light districtwhite-light district Possible alternative to red-light district. The term appears in Theodore Dreiser's book A Hoosier Holiday (1916).

of lunar lusts

StellectricStellectric A word formed from “stellar” (star) and “electric” signs

“Wing shows on Starway”

“Zodiac carrousel”

Cyclones

of ecstatic dust

and ashes whirl

crusaders

from hallucinatory citadels

of shattered glass

into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams