Ai’s Poem for Marilyn: ‘She Didn’t Even Wave’

Killing Floor, a prize-winning 1979 collection from a poet named Ai, has been republished by Tavern Books, as Robert Harn reports for the Portland Mercury.

“There’s a vital socio-political edge to Killing Floor. Ai attempts to reckon with the horrors of the past, acknowledging everything from the violence that occurred in Mexico following the election of Manuel Ávila Camacho to the tragic life of Marilyn Monroe. Killing Floor holds important messages of empathy and survival that many still need to hear.”

I managed to find an extract from the Marilyn-related poem in this contemporary review from the Washington Post. ‘She Didn’t Even Wave’ is dedicated to Marilyn although the subject is a woman killed by lightning. It did remind me a little of Norma Jeane and her tenuous relationship with her mentally ill mother Gladys.

“Let me wave goodby

Mama never got a chance to do it.

She was walking toward the barn when it struck her. I didn’t move;

I just stood at the screen door.

Her whole body was light.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

I remember how she cried in the kitchen a few minutes before.

She said, ‘God. Married.

I don’t believe it, Jean, I won’t.

He takes and takes and you just give.’

At the door, she held out her arms and I ran to her . . .

Then she walked outside.

And I kept saying, I’ve got to, Mama, hug me again. Please don’t go. . . .”

 

Movie Greats: Barry Norman on Marilyn

Barry Norman, the British critic who fronted a weekly film show on BBC television from 1972-1998, has died aged 83. In the late 1970s, he wrote and presented The Hollywood Greats, a documentary series profiling legendary stars. An episode about Marilyn, featuring interviews with Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder and Eli Wallach, and many others, was broadcast in 1979 – you can watch it here.

He also wrote two books accompanying the series. The latter volume, The Movie Greats (1981), includes a chapter about Marilyn.

“What she most certainly was, and what she proved herself to be time and again, was a most wonderfully gifted comedienne, a woman whose contribution of abundant physical charms – a positive cornucopia of femininity – and wistful shyness made you at once want to laugh at her and protect her. Nobody since has come even remotely close to replacing her.

If only, you think, if only someone had given her a great big hug when she was still a little girl and said, ‘Hey, listen, I love you,’ then maybe everything would have been different. But in that case she would probably never have become Marilyn Monroe and the world would have been the poorer for it because Marilyn Monroe was something rather special.

You can take every possible identifiable ingredient that she had and put them together and multiply them and add in the date and the number you first thought of and at the end of it all you’ve got is a blonde, a small girl with a sweet face and a remarkably voluptuous body. But you still haven’t got another Marilyn Monroe.”