Elsa von Fretag-Loringhoven

Subjoyride

‹Sense into Nonsense›

Between the acts:

Holeproof –

Pompean Nightcream

for feeble old people!

spread on thickly –

massage briskly with Vicks –

until skin is red –

Then repeat!

If necessary!

Caution!!!

Don’t rush!

Please!

Life’s best work!

An ambition realized!

Against jars:

Melanchrino

Dykman Oval –

against harsh winds:

Cover with hot flannel

Sloping lines!

Be alert!

sanitary!

clean!

after hydrox!

subjoy passengers

can always

Lorna Doone!

Look for it!

Delicious with poached egg!

Makes you

eat –

sleep –

feel –

work –

the runkels of a man better!

Protects you

when buying sliced meat

the guard will tell you!

—Live happier in Leonia – —

Subjoyride

Ready-to-wear

American Soul Poetry

‹The right kind›

Lux Kamel hands off the

Better Bologna’s Beauty –

Get this straight—Wrigley’s

Pinaud’s Heels for the wise –

Nothing so Pepsodent – woothing

Pussywillow – kept clean

Cheese.

They satisfy the man of

Largest Mustard Underwear –

No dosing

Just rub it on –

Subjoy Ride IV

You can teach a saelect

seal packerparrot – rinso –

postum lister world-war

on saxo salve – —

Try a veenotoic semi-

sofit of a stiff indigestion

Don’t scratch!

Original sunshine makes

Tanlac children

Do you know that made

from rich pure shaving

cream Jim Henry tired

out? –

Famous fain reduces

reg’lar fellows to the

toughest korry-krome

pancake apparel – kept

antiseptic with gold dust

Rapid transit – —

It has raised 3 generations

of mince-piston-rings-pie.

________

Born in Swinemunde on the Baltic Sea in Pommerania (now in Poland, but then part of Germany), Else Hildegard Ploetz grew up close to her mother, ultimately blaming her death on her father, who she was convinced had given her syphilis. Running away to Berlin, the young Else participated in the circle of poets around Stefan George and had a three-year affair with the popular Bohemian artist, Melchior Lechter. Later, she had a passionate affair with Ernst Hardt, and when that relationship fell apart, she toured as a member of a tableau vivant performers. After other sexual affairs and relationships, including two years of marriage, Ploetz traveled with Felix Paul Greve, who was later imprisoned for embezzlement, and staged his own suicide to disappear from Germany. Ploetz followed him to the US and, ultimately, became a model for artists. In 1913 she married Baron Leon von Freytag-Loringhoven in New York, renaming herself the Baroness. When Baron Freytag-Loringhoven left her to return to Germany, Else remained in New York, modeling for artists such as Man Ray. Ray and Marcel Duchamp made a short film of her, and she soon became famous as a Greenwich Village legend, arrested several times for wearing revealing costumes and for stealing objects that caught her eye. During the same period, she developed a close friendship with novelist and poet Djuna Barnes, who helped her in Paris and later in Germany. On December 14, 1927, von Freytag-Loringhoven died of asphyxiation due to a gas jet left on overnight. Some acquaintances presumed her death was suicide, but friends such as Barnes and Peggy Guggenheim believed it was, as Barnes put it, “a stupid joke.” Her papers fell into the possession of Barnes after her death.

The selections above will appear in Subjoyride: Selected Poems from Green Integer later this year.