Marilyn Monroe’s Unpublished Poems !

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s. Born as Norma Jeane Mortenson; Marilyn Monroe took great pains to be photographed reading or holding a book — insistence born not out vain affectation but of a genuine love of literature. Her personal library contained four hundred books, including classics like Dostoyevsky and Milton, and modern staples like Hemingway and Kerouac. While she wasn’t shooting, she was taking literature and history night classes at UCLA. And yet, the public image of a breezy, bubbly blonde endures as a caricature of Monroe’s character, standing in stark contrast with whatever deep-seated demons led her to take her own life. 

But her private poetry — fragmentary, poem-like texts scribbled in notebooks and on loose-leaf paper, published for the first time in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters (public library) — reveal a complex, sensitive being who peered deeply into her own psyche and thought intensely about the world and other people. What these texts bespeak, above all, is the tragic disconnect between a highly visible public persona and a highly vulnerable private person, misunderstood by the world, longing to be truly seen. Presenting some poems : Being Poet

1.

Only parts of us will ever
touch only parts of others –
one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth.
We can only share the part that is within another’s knowing acceptable to
so one
is for most part alone.
As it is meant to be in
evidently in nature — at best perhaps it could make
our understanding seek
another’s loneliness out.

2.

Life –
I am of both of your directions|
Somehow remaining hanging downward
the most
but strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

3.

ah damn I wish that I were
dead — absolutely nonexistent –
gone away from here — from
everywhere but how would I
There is always bridges — the Brooklyn
bridge –
But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there and the air is so clean)
walking it seems peaceful even with all those
cars going crazy underneath. So
it would have to be some other bridge
an ugly one and with no view — except
I like in particular all bridges — there’s some-
thing about them and besides I’ve
never seen an ugly bridge

4.

Stones on the walk
every color there is
I stare down at you|
like a horizon –
the space / the air is between us beckoning
and I am many stories up
my feet frightened|
as I grasp towards you

5.

feel what I feel
within myself — that is trying to
become aware of it
also what I feel in others
not being ashamed of my feeling, thoughts — or ideas

realize the thing that
they are –

6.

I’m finding that sincerity
and to be as simple or direct as (possible) I’d like
is often taken for sheer stupidity
but since it is not a sincere world –
it’s very probable that being sincere is stupid.
One probably is stupid to
be sincere since it’s in this world
and no other world that we know
for sure we exist — meaning that –
(since reality exists it should be met and dealt with)
since there is reality to deal with

7.

To have your heart is
the only completely happy proud thing (that ever belonged
to me) I’ve ever possessed so

8.

I guess I have always been
deeply terrified at to really be someone’s
wife
since I know life
one cannot love another,
ever, really

9.

for life
It is rather a determination not to be overwhelmed
for work
The truth can only be recalled, never invented