*No part of this article can be used or reproduced without the permission of Susana H. Case and/or Margo Taft Stever.
Susana H. Case
Margo Taft Stever
How did the two of you originally meet? And can you describe your journey of friendship and poetry together?
Susana: Along with Stephanie Strickland, Margo was my first editor, when my chapbook manuscript, The Scottish Café, won the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition in 2002. Margo is the founding editor of Slapering Hol Press, affiliated with the Hudson Valley Writers Center, which she also founded. Since mentoring of authors is a significant part of what Slapering Hol Press does, the relationship between us continued over time as both of us wrote and published. We now find ourselves press mates at Broadstone Books with our latest collections of poetry, co-editors of Slapering Hol Press along with Mervyn Taylor, and co-editors of this anthology.
Stephanie Strickland’s website
http://www.stephaniestrickland.com/
Slapering Hol Press Website
https://www.writerscenter.org/aboutshp/
Susana Case Webiste and info about THE SCOTTISH CAFÉ
Hudson Valley Writers Center Website
https://www.writerscenter.org/
Broadstone Books
https://www.broadstonebooks.com/
Mervyn Taylor (Click Below on Introduction to go to Mervyn Taylor’s website)
What led the two of you to start reading Marilyn Monroe Poems?
We started reading poems about Marilyn Monroe after we decided to create the Marilyn anthology. We also began to read books on Monroe, including those by Gloria Steinem, Norman Mailer, Carl Rollyson, and Lois Banner. Marilyn Monroe films are classics, and so we have always watched and re-watched those.
We’ve both written poems in which Marilyn Monroe appears, and we had a curiosity about others out there. We knew, of course, some of the classic ones—those of Sharon Olds, Ernesto Cardenal, Edwin Morgan, and David Lehman, just to name a few—but we had no idea starting out that she could be an inspiration for so much poetry with so much variety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Cardenal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lehman
Susana: what led you to want to do an anthology on Marilyn Monroe (before you asked Margo to participate)?
It happened in a serendipitous fashion and at first, it wasn’t serious. Both Margo and I had read our poems on the same Zoom reading series during the pandemic–I think it was Lit Balm. By coincidence, among our other poems, both of us had brought one that included Marilyn Monroe. I jokingly suggested afterward we should create an anthology of Marilyn Monroe poems. Margo thought it was a great idea. And then it all happened.
How did you determine to set the anthology up the way you did – persona, body, art and death?
Susana: We looked to see the subjects around which our contributors had organized their poems and that seemed a natural division. We received a lot of work on the “mask,” Marilyn as a character, which of course, is what she created. Body was an inevitable category because so much of what the character Marilyn was centered on was her beautiful body. The art section includes many ekphrastic poems—inspired by her movies, by artworks.
https://www.thoughtco.com/ekphrastic-poetry-definition-examples-4174699
Marilyn has been a subject for artists since de Kooning (BELOW RIGHT), whose depiction of Marilyn, as previously mentioned, is on the cover of the anthology. And finally, the death of Marilyn Monroe, startling when it happened, has been the inspiration for many great poems of a varied nature.
https://www.willem-de-kooning.org/
How did you determine which poems to include and which ones to disregard?
Margo: When we read through a whole series of poems or an entire book of poems on Marilyn, we would choose a number for further consideration and then through discussion, we would decide among them and whittled the choice to one selection.
Were there poems that you loved that are not included in this anthology?
No, we scoured the poetry archives for poems about Marilyn and, though we could not include everything submitted to us, we brought together what we thought were good poems. We couldn’t get the rights, which is often an elaborate procedure, for one or two. Also, we limited the contributions to one poem per author, and sometimes we had to choose one poem out of several books of poems or poem sequences solely about Marilyn. We didn’t include poems that were too long, and there are some voluminous poems on Monroe. We looked for international contributions as well, as we didn’t want to make this an anthology solely with American voices. There are several translated poems in the anthology, though there are many more poems about Marilyn Monroe, particularly in Italian.
What poems (and by whom) from the collection did you find most compelling? Or even literary?
We included some major poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Sharon Olds, and a few emerging poets, and many poets in between. We’ve included both dead poets, such as Delmore Schwartz, Sylvia Plath, and Lyn Lifshin. We’ve included mostly poets writing in English but have a few translations. We see the collection as an organic whole in which the poems speak to one another, so it’s hard to pick out just a few as compelling. It’s the variation in content and tone, form and free verse, sympathy toward her and antagonism toward what she represented, that appeal to us.
https://modernamericanpoetry.org/poet/gwendolyn-brooks
https://poets.org/poet/sharon-olds
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/delmore-schwartz
How did the two of you communicate through this process?
We are friends as well as colleagues and over the years, we have developed a smooth channel of communication, so we continued with that via email, phone, and Zoom. From time to time, we met in person, but because of the pandemic which coincided with constructing the manuscript, this was often the most difficult option.
What led you to choose Lois Banner to do the introduction?
We considered a number of biographers of Marilyn Monroe, but we choose Lois Banner because she was one of the founders of the women’s history movement, and she had written several respected books on Monroe. She is a historian of glamour and who was more glamourous than Marilyn in mid-twentieth century America?
And how did you approach Lois Banner about this? And what was her response?
We emailed her, and she responded that she would be pleased to write the introduction.
https://www.veteranfeministsofamerica.org/legacy/Lois_Banner.htm
I know Marilyn Monroe posed for Playboy. Is it possible for a woman to be a feminist and still pose nude?
Of course, she was motivated to pose nude because the job paid better, and she was in debt at that point in her life; it was not that she wanted to make a feminist statement. The second wave feminist movement did not even begin until the year after her death. What is even more ironic is that she was paid $50 for the photo shoot. She hadn’t actually posed for Playboy, but rather for a pinup photographer named Tom Kelley who later sold the photos for a calendar. The photos that Playboy used were a few years old, and Hugh Hefner used the nude cover photo to launch Playboy‘s first issue. She wasn’t even paid by Hefner, and she hadn’t given consent. Still, when it threatened to become a scandal, after she was recognized on the calendar, Marilyn maintained she’d done nothing wrong, and the public supported her position; then she got a cover on Life Magazine, solidifying that she was a respectable cultural icon.
Whether or not it is possible to be a feminist today and pose nude is another question, but Marilyn’s situation must be understood in order to evaluate it with accuracy.
What led you to choose Milk & Cake Press as the publisher? And can you describe the publication journey? Can you give me the names from Milk & Cake Press publishers who worked with you on this project?
Susana had previously published a chapbook with Milk & Cake Press. She liked the production values of the books she saw from the press and thought it might be subject matter that would interest them. Kim Jacobs-Beck, Daniel Beck, Miranda Scharf, and Jonathon Scharf are the principals of Milk & Cake Press. It’s a family enterprise. Kim is the publisher and editor-in-chief. Dan designs and lays out the books, Miranda is editor, and Jonathon designs covers.
https://www.facebook.com/kim.jacobsbeck/
https://www.facebook.com/daniel.beck.7549
https://www.facebook.com/mirandasaralyn
https://www.facebook.com/jonathon.scharf
Why choose February for the anthology’s release when her death anniversary is August?
We wanted to time the release for earlier in the year and a release in time for Valentine’s Day seemed appropriate for an anthology titled, I Wanna Be Loved by You. From previous experience, we have found that getting a book published in the beginning of the year provides more time to get the word out about the book. Although it shouldn’t be true, many people tend to view a book as old if it is just a year past its publication date.
Can you go into detail about the research process and the places or items you researched?
For researching poets to include, we started with both of our address books, which contained the contact information for a large number of poets. Those poets then told us about other poets who had Marilyn poems, and then we went to the internet to search for still more poems. We also read a number of biographies on Marilyn Monroe by Gloria Steinem, Carl Rollyson, Lois Banner, and Norman Mailer. To determine what cover to use, we looked through books of photographs and paintings of Monroe. After discovering the portrait by Willem de Kooning which perfectly depicted the complexity of the actress, we set about figuring out how to get permission to use his portrait of Monroe on the cover. Getting permission often turns out to be a detective process in and of itself.
https://www.facebook.com/lois.banner.75
Out of all your research and reading of poems on Marilyn Monroe, what was the most fascinating facts about her and her life that you discovered?
Margo: After accepting the view of Marilyn as the dumb blonde, I was bowled over when I read about her Dickensian childhood with a father who she would never meet and a mother who boarded her with a neighbor almost from birth for her first six years. When her mother, Gladys, would visit the neighbor, Marilyn would disturb her mother by turning the pages of a book. The frightened child would spend most of her mother’s visits hiding from her in a closet. When the neighbor could no longer care for her, Marilyn was farmed out to boarding houses where she was expected to wash and clean dishes, take a bath in water used by others, and she endured sexual abuse. She also spent time in an orphanage.
The Childhood years – As Told By Marilyn Monroe
The Teenage And Modeling Years – As Told By Marilyn Monroe
Hollywood was always held up to her as a castle on a hill by one of her main mentors, Grace McKee, who did not have a problem with promoting Marilyn’s dreams of becoming a movie star, while at the same time arranging for the first of her three marriages at the age of sixteen to James Dougherty, a high school standout.
Monroe was a trailblazer of human rights battles to come by helping her friend, the famous Ella Fitzgerald, get a gig at the Mocambo, a popular Los Angeles club, which had banned the singer because of her weight and perceived lack of glamour. Monroe called the owner of the club and promised to bring celebrities, including her friends, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, to sit in the front if they would allow Fitzgerald to perform. The story goes that Monroe was unable to attend as a result of a medical procedure related to endometriosis from which she suffered, but she was photographed with Fitzgerald at the Tiffany Club in New York later that year. After the Mocambo appearance, Fitzgerald never had to play in a small club again. She was even asked back to appear at the Mocambo later in November, 1954.
The Story of the Ella Fitzgerald’s and Marilyn Monroe’s Friendship
According to Geoffrey Mark, a Fitzgerald biographer, Monroe also planned to attend Fitzgerald’s performance in Colorado, but Monroe refused to set foot in the venue until they would allow the singer to enter through the front door instead of the side door, through which they coerced people of color.
Fitzgerald would later say about Monroe, “She was an unusual woman—a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”
http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/
As a harbinger of the #MeToo Movement, in various interviews including her 1962 interview with George Barris just months before her death, Monroe talked openly about getting sexually harassed and abused as a child in some of the many boarding houses and foster homes in which she was forced to reside after her mother was institutionalized in a mental hospital. For instance, when Marilyn was eight years old and living at one boarding house, she was invited by a respected old boarder, a Mr. Kinnell, to come in his room. He locked his door behind her and proceeded to put his arms around her and fondle her in places where she should never have been touched. When Marilyn ran to tell the foster mother about the incident, she didn’t believe Monroe, allegedly slapped her across her face, and said, “Shame on you.”
Photographer George Barris Interviewed About His Friendship and photos of Marilyn Monroe
What is fascinating about Marilyn recounting this abuse and other such incidents that she experienced is that during the fifties and early sixties, women didn’t talk about sexual abuse. If they did, they generally weren’t believed. If a man looked respectable, then the assumption was that the victim of sexual predation had to be lying. It was brave for Monroe to continuously describe the abuse that she suffered. She also endured what today would be considered #MeToo harassment from men in a position to enable her career aspirations.
Click Below to go to #MeToo Website.
It is remarkable that Marilyn initially studied acting with Natasha Lytess, an acting coach, and Michael Chekhov, one of her teachers of the Stanislavsky Method, both of whom were theater people who had fled Hitler’s Germany for Hollywood. In Germany clowns as absurd characters marked the horrors of war and celebrated the wisdom of fools, escaping to a fantasy world of their own making. Chekhov was known for his playing of clowns, and both were versed in the clowns of commedia dell’arte. It is through their teaching of the European comic tradition that Marilyn developed the dumb blonde character that captivated the postwar public, but in the end trapped her in its clenches and stultified her efforts to become a serious actress.
These are just a few of the many revealing discoveries about Marilyn that Susana and I uncovered.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/stanislavski-method
What is your first memory of Marilyn Monroe?
Susana: I think the first time I was aware of her is when she died. I was a child, but of course, it was the front page of all the New York newspapers, and my parents used to buy several of the papers. So, it was clear that it was a big deal. At that point, I had not yet seen any of her movies, and if her death was discussed at home, which is probable, I have no memory of that discussion.
Archive Newsreel Announces the Death of Marilyn Monroe
Margo: I do not remember my first memory of Marilyn, but the received societal myth of her being definitely existed as a polar opposite of what I wanted to become. As a child, I was a tom boy, interested in exploring fields and streams, and the specter of a blonde bombshell princess was totally outside my sphere of interest. She died the same year and a month before my father died, so I probably paid less attention to her passing than I might have.
The Death of Marilyn Monroe
What surprised you the most about Marilyn Monroe that you learned?
Susana: What was surprising is how many of the people around her knew at the time that she was bright and intellectually engaged, but they chose to dismiss those qualities anyway. Despite knowing intellectually what mid-century America was like for women, it still stings.
Margo: It was dumfounding to learn that Marilyn Monroe received only $100,000 for a film from Twentieth Century-Fox, the same studio that at the same time offered Elizabeth Taylor a million dollars for the film, Cleopatra.
List of Marilyn Monroe Movies
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls076473369/
It is also astonishing to note that Marilyn Monroe was so dedicated to honing her acting skills that after studying with Lytess and Chekhov, she fled the dumb blonde role and stultification of Hollywood for New York City and enrolled in Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio where he would continue to teach her the Stanislavski Method. Strasberg had a tremendous impact on American acting and produced generations of actors such as James Dean and Dustin Hoffman. What is most amazing is that he put Marilyn Monroe on the same rung as Marlon Brando, calling her one of his most formidable students. He heralded her work as a committed actress and gave her confidence in her acting ability.
Marilyn Monroe and Lee Strasberg Talk About Each Other
How would you differentiate Marilyn Monroe’s private persona from her public one?
Susana: We’re not sure how much the public knew about her early and difficult life before the controversy over her posing nude. She was a victim, but more than that, she was also a steward of her own career and image, aware of gender power and the art of artifice; that is, she knew how to socially construct glamour. Her private life appears to have been a more serious one: businesswoman, writer, connoisseur of modern art, a bit bookish. She was politically engaged as well, supporting desegregation in the entertainment business, entertaining the troops at multiple stops in a tour of Korea, and refusing to disassociate herself from her third husband, Arthur Miller, when he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She also refused to name names, though some feared it would threaten her career.
Marilyn Monroe in South Korea
Are there any Marilyn Monroe movies where her private persona (her true self) is visible?
Margo: Some of her earlier films such as Clash by Night amplify Monroe’s serious side, “her private persona” and down to earth nature when she appears in blue jeans rather than foxy gowns.
Clash By Night preview
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi861733401?playlistId=tt0044502&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi
After 1952, when he decided that she was badly cast in Don’t Bother to Knock, Darryl Zanuck, Monroe’s film producer and studio executive, decided that Monroe’s acting should be solely reserved for light comedy, and she never had the opportunity to play a dramatic part in any Twentieth Century-Fox film after that.
Don’t Bother To Knock preview
In a purely political move, the producers and directors at Fox decided to sell Monroe as a brand, and they refused to allow her to appear in any other kind of role than the dumb blonde. When men returned from the war, many were ready to watch a sexy broad who played warm, welcoming roles, and the image of voluptuous Marilyn as the dumb and always accepting blonde was the producers’ perfect sleight of hand.
Monroe’s major goal was to be a serious actress, and rather than accepting her prearranged fate, with photographer Milton Greene in 1953, she was one of the first women to establish her own film production company. She and Greene limited the number of films that she was required to do for Twentieth Century-Fox, and through her film company, she planned to work with directors whom she believed shared her goals.
The Marilyn Monroe Photograph Collection By Milton Greene
Although she finally set up a potentially compatible working situation and Arthur Miller wrote a complex role specifically for her in The Misfits, their marriage (BELOW LEFT) was falling apart as she abused Nembutal, which she took for insomnia; she was hospitalized in the middle of the film, and even though that film was completed, she was never able to fully realize her goal of becoming known for successfully playing serious roles.
The Misfits preview
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1236451609?playlistId=tt0055184&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi
There are many myths and falsehoods about Marilyn Monroe. Are there any that you know of that you can dismiss? Or at least believe to be false.
Margo: Probably the biggest myth about Monroe that isn’t true is the idea that she was a dumb blonde. Though she never had the opportunity to finish high school, she brought volumes of Shelley, Whitman, Keats, and Rilke to movie sets, along with the novels by Thomas Wolfe and James Joyce, as well as books on history and mysticism.
Carl Rollyson in his biography, Marilyn Monroe: The Life of the Actress, describes how one of Joe DiMaggio’s nieces, June DiMaggio, was moved by Monroe’s ability to recite passages of Emerson’s poetry.
Click to order Marilyn, Joe, & Me by June DiMaggio
She liked to discuss serious literature, as when she impressed the reporter, Tom Hutchinson, with her knowledge of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.
Click to order The Screen Greats Marilyn Monroe by Tom Hutchinson
Early in her third marriage, her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, recounts her emerging from a Los Angeles bookstore almost singing a stanza from e. e. cummings’s famous poem, “in Just.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47247/in-just
Captured in fragments (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), published posthumously, Monroe’s poetic efforts demonstrate that she had talent as a poet, but she never developed her writing, undoubtedly because rather than being encouraged, she was frozen into the mold of the “dumb blonde,” a role dense with history, but antithetical to that of a poet or a serious actress.
Click below to order FRAGMENTS by Marilyn Monroe
Susana: The rumor that her death was not an accidental overdose, that she had swallowed too large a quantity of pills for it to have been accidental, appears unlikely. There are persistent conspiracy theories suggesting she was murdered, in particular, by Robert Kennedy, or because of an affair with Robert Kennedy, or to prevent the damage both to Robert and John F. Kennedy if her knowledge of various controversial matters of state which she had threatened to reveal became known to the public. There are a variety of these, and they are baroque in construction. We don’t believe them.
Prior to her suicide, she suffered many episodes of depression and abuse of pills. For instance, during the filming of The Misfits, she was committed to the Westside Hospital in Los Angeles where she was gradually weaned off Nembutal after she had a breakdown in the middle of the filming at the same time her relationship with Arthur Miller was falling apart.
Why do you think people are so fascinated with Marilyn Monroe?
Susana: Marilyn owned her sexuality, was able to commodify it into a successful film career, and was unapologetic about doing so. This was so atypical of the period in which she lived and is atypical even now, sixty-plus years later. I think her metamorphosis is also captivating. She started out pretty but morphed (partially through her own hard work and partially through decisions by studio bosses) into someone almost superhuman in sexual appeal. This commodification is fascinating, but her early death also lends to the process a form of tragedy. It fits in with the notion that women comfortable with their own sexuality will ultimately be punished.
Margo: Monroe was the personification of the adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Masquerading as the dumb blonde, the role that she intentionally created, she was, actually, more the rebel who allied herself with the working class and the dispossessed. She was a paradox with so many different selves that she has become a prism that one can see from different angles with shimmering images, constantly changing in the light. Her early death makes it even more fascinating for us to imagine what she might have become.
What would you say to those who felt one of Marilyn Monroe’s enemies was within herself?
Susana: We all battle internal demons, and we can’t be dismissive of those battles. One in four adults in the United States has a diagnosable mental disorder according to the National Institute of Mental Health Disorders, and women are particularly prone to depression. We tend to think first of her glamour, but she had more than one mental disability. Of course, it is also true that demons are frequently one of the significant engines of creativity, and Monroe may never have developed the drive and passion to achieve such monumental acclaim if she were from a normal, loving family with an ordinary life.
What led you to decide to donate all profits to RAINN?
Susana: Abuse and sexual violence were such a powerful and negative forces in Marilyn Monroe’s life, despite the strength manifested in aspects of her character. She had a mother who was institutionalized and never could take proper care of her in addition to a father whom she never met—as mentioned, Marilyn spent time in an orphanage and in foster care. She was sexually abused in at least one of the boarding houses where she was forced to live. There are intimations of possible domestic violence on the part of her second husband, Joe DiMaggio, who perhaps was jealous over the size of her fan base or overly possessive of her. He never thought Hollywood would give her a breakout role, so he demanded that she give up her acting career and be satisfied with being Mrs. DiMaggio.
He was apparently angered by the iconic photo session during which Marilyn’s underwear showed during the filming of The Seven Year Itch when she stood over a subway grate and a breeze blew her skirt into the air. Studio bosses who held in their hands the careers not only of Marilyn, but of many aspiring young actresses, routinely sexually violated their female workers.
Subway Scene from THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
Subway Photo Album from THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
We are both interested in female empowerment and gender violence, and we do not want to profit from Monroe’s tragedy. RAINN seemed a natural for any potential monetary gain from the anthology. We hope there is some, as we support what RAINN does for those who are victims of sexual violence.
Anything else you would like to add?
Margo: Thanks so much for taking the time to interview us at the beginning of this exciting adventure—bringing I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe into the world.
Click Below to order I WANNA BE LOVED BY YOU: POEMS ON MARILYN MONROE
Thank you, Chris, for your blog and all the interest that you show towards other writers. I hope that Facebook sees the light and allows your blog, which they blocked for no valid reason, to be back on its pages. In the January 20th issue of the New York Times, in the Technology/Companies Section, Shira Ovide (“How Facebook’s Little Mistakes Can Add Up: Social Media Users Are Often Left in the Dark as to Why Their Posts Were Deleted or Disabled,”) documents how Facebook bans all sorts of valid and important posts. She says, “Social networks are essential public spaces that are too big and fast-moving for anyone to effectively manage. Wrong calls happen.” Maybe, you could find other wronged people, who also have banned posts, through this article and form a coalition to force Facebook to change. Since you are personally affected, if you got together with others in similar straits, you could have a potentially strong force to pressure Facebook to modify their unfair practices.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/shira-ovide
Can you give me a list of all of the poets included in this anthology?
We’ve put all the poets and poem titles at the end because it’s a rather long list. You’ll note we included one of Marilyn Monroe’s poems last. We thought she should have the final word.
*No part of this article can be used or reproduced without the permission of Susana H. Case and/or Margo Taft Stever.
Susana H. Case
Margo Taft Stever