Marilyn Monroe, The Poetess

On the first of May I wrote about Marilyn Monroe's new book 'Fragments'. Yes, new, even though it has been now 48 years after her death. It would seem that the most photographed, talked and written about, and the most desired woman and movie star was not as what the world media described and reported. She was a lot more.

The new book scheduled to come out in Oct is not just a compilation of her diaries in which she bared all aspects of her day to day life and intimate thoughts, but included private communications with her psychoanalyst, hand-written letters, receipts, even poems, untouched and unedited since her death. All these materials had been under custody of Anne Strasbery, widow of Lee Strasbery, the man who had influenced her more than anyone else, as her acting professor, mentor, confidant, and most of all, a close friend. Ann was designated as heiress and keeper of his will and would now be edited simultaneously in France, Italy, England and America. In Spain, it's available on bookshelves in Autumn, by Seix Barral. Anne said of her: ' Her writing was sometimes melancholic, but beautiful. In some of the notes one sees an association of ideas, and reflections that are like auto-psychoanalysis of herself. It also showed that she clearly enjoyed writing.  

Elena Ranirez, director of the editorial, explained that the documents have an extraordinary emotional and literary value, especially in her poems and writing, correspondence with the best writers of her time, like Sommerset Maugham, Carson McCullers, Truman Caporte and Norman Mailer, Karen Bilxen, Pier Paolo Pasoline amongst others. It has 250 pages full of the most intimate thoughts of the actress, in reproduction facsimile that lets readers see her own hand-writing, annotations of her study, and correction - from when she was an adolescent till 1062.  It's the 1st ever book in which the real Marilyn, more correctly, Norma Jean, told her own life story, not through a 3rd party. Theeditor Courtney Hodell of Ferrer, Straus and Giroux, summed up that 'She was obviously an avid reader and with great talent to write. There are very beautiful poetry pieces and paragraphs that calls for attention.'

She died at 36, on the 5th of August, 1962, in her home in Los Angeles. 

This was taken at Long Island in 1955. The quality of the picture is poor, but it's one I have never seen before.

Tags: mm, poetess