Vanity Fair has excerpts from a new trove of documents written by Marilyn Monroe that will be published later this fall as Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters. The writings, which focus largely on Monroe’s relationship with her acting teacher Lee Strasberg, her husband Arthur Miller, and her three psychiatrists, are necessarily interesting (and often tortured), but, despite VF’s hagiographic framing, not necessarily doing much to burnish Monroe’s legend. Yes, there’s a real frisson in imagining Monroe writing about “alonement,” but it’s not quite enough to cover for the badness of bad poetry, even the kind written in clear emotional distress at the behest of a psychoanalyst. After all, poetry is hard! Just ask Jewel.
Here are some of Monroe’s poems, which are riveting on a historical and empathic level, but not so much on an aesthetic one — even though, admittedly, they could be so much worse. (Universal reminder: Burn poems composed in high school later this afternoon.) The first is about her great-aunt Ida, who, as you’ll see, was not very nice:
Ida — I have still
been obeying her —
it’s not only harmful
for me to do so
but unrealality because
life starts from Now ….
working (doing my tasks that I
have set for myself)
On the stage — I will
not be punished for it
or be whipped
or be threatened
or not be loved
or sent to hell to burn with bad people
feeling that I am also bad.
or be afraid of my [genitals] being
or ashamed
exposed known and seen —
so what
or ashamed of my
sensitive feelings —
One about Arthur Miller:
my love sleeps besides me —
in the faint light — I see his manly jaw
give way — and the mouth of his
boyhood returns
with a softness softer
its sensitiveness trembling
in stillness
his eyes must have look out
wonderously from the cave of the little
boy — when the things he did not understand —
he forgot
And this one, titled “After one year of analysis.”
And
Help help
Help
I feel life coming closer
when all I want
Is to die.
Scream —
You began and ended in air
but where was the middle?
There’s lots more, including prose, here.
