{
 "id": "mina-loy/human-cylinders",
 "title": "Human Cylinders",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Mina Loy",
 "poet_slug": "mina-loy",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917)",
  "note": "First located printing. The anthology's own acknowledgement states that some of the poems in it first appeared in outside periodicals, without saying which, so an earlier printing has not been ruled out.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/othersanantholo01kreygoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/mina-loy_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x002129491?urlappend=%3Bseq=396",
   "https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/17374476",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_others-a-magazine-of-the-new-verse_1916-07_3_1/page/27",
   "https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/17390662",
   "https://archive.org/details/othersanantholo01kreygoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cu31924022030351",
   "https://archive.org/details/littlereview07mcke/page/n199",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_others-a-magazine-of-the-new-verse_1917-04_3_6",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_dial_1921-06_70/page/672",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_dial_1921-08_71/page/n15",
   "https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.32106010168349",
   "https://archive.org/details/contact-collection-of-contemporary-writers/page/137",
   "https://personal.colby.edu/~isadoff/map/loy.doc",
   "https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/digital_objects/211477",
   "https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/transatlantic/1/"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 45,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The human cylinders",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Revolving in the enervating dusk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That wraps each closer in the mystery",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of singularity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among the litter of a sunless afternoon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Having eaten without tasting",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Talked without communion",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And at least two of us",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loved a very little",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without seeking",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To know if our two miseries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the lucid rush-together of automatons",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could form one opulent well-being",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Simplifications of men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the enervating dusk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your indistinctness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Serves me the core of the kernel of you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When in the frenzied reaching-out of intellect to intellect",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaning brow to brow communicative",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the abyss of the potential",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Concordance of respiration",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shames",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Absence of corresponding between the verbal sensory",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And reciprocity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of conception",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And expression",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where each extrudes beyond the tangible",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One thin pale trail of speculation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From among us we have sent out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the enervating dusk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One little whining beast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose longing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is to slink back to antediluvian burrow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And one elastic tentacle of intuition",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To quiver among the stars",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The impartiality of the absolute",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Routs the polemic",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or which of us",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Receiving the holy-ghost",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Catch it and caging",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lose it",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Or in the problematic",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Destroy the Universe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a solution.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}