Loy is described as a "brilliant literary enigma" by Rachel Potter and Suzanne Hobson who outline a chronological map of her geographical and literary shifts.[53] Loy's poetry was published in several magazines before being published in book form. The magazines that she was featured in include Camera Work, Trend, Rogue, Little Review, and Dial.[1] Loy had two volumes of her poetry published in her lifetime: The Lunar Baedeker (1923) and The Lunar Baedeker & Time-tables (1958). The Lunar Baedeker included her most famous work, "Love Songs", in a shortened version.[1] It also included four poems included in Others in 1915, but their sexual explicitness had provoked a violent reaction, which made it difficult to publish the rest.[1] Posthumously, two updated volumes of her poetry were released, The Last Lunar Baedeker (Highlands, NC, Jargon Society, 1982) and The Lost Lunar Baedeker (New York, Farrar Straus Girous, 1996 and Manchester, Carcanet, 1997), both edited by Roger L. Conover. The 1997 edition unaccountably omits Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose, a sequence of 21 poems, part semi-autobiographical, part social satire, arguably Loy's most accomplished work -- which, as a result of this omission, remains out of print. Songs to Joannes is in both editions.[54]
Her only novel, Insel, was published posthumously in 1991. It is about the relationship between a German artist, Insel, and an art dealer, Mrs. Jones. Some critics have suggested that the novel is based on Loy's relationship with Richard Oelze. However, Sandeep Parmar has said that it is actually about Loy's relationship with her creative self.[55]
