“ Let my fingers wander in the moss Where glows the rosebud. ” – Paul Verlaine
“ My black triangle sandwiched between the geography of my thighs Is a Bermuda of tiny atoms forever seizing and releasing the world My black triangle is so rich that it flows over on to the dry crotch of the world My black triangle is black light sitting on the threshold of the world Overlooking my deep-pink probabilities… ” -- Grace Nichols
Making love to Marilyn is a collection of sensual love poems based on the BBC Radio 4 series. Though the book is not bulky, it has a wide range of collection starting from ancient to modern times, from Sappho to Wendy Cope. Marilyn Monroe, who is considered to be one of the most sensual divas of modern times, seems to be omnipresent in the book as the chapters suggest. The book is divided into five sections named after songs or films pertaining to Monroe. The editor Susan Roberts has done a wonderful job by holding a wide variety of poets together, the common theme being Love in its myriad hues, which is typical of Marilyn Monroe. Besides the classical poets like Homer, Sappho ,Catullus, Ovid, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Lorca etc.
, It includes the poems of Anne Sexton, Lynn Peters, Wendy Cope, John Berryman, Simon Armitage, Gavin Ewart, Andrew Marvell, Thom Gunn, Carol Ann Duffy, E. E. Cummings, Selima Hill, Cavafy, John Donne, Robert Herrick, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heany, Sujata Bhatt etc. In the words of Susan Roberts, the Editor, - “Marilyn Monroe intrigues us still. For men and women alike, she has come to embody many ideas and experiences of love, everything from innocence to scandal, from seduction to tragedy. Hers is an image which endures, even strengthens with time. In another 2,000 years she may well take her place alongside Aphrodite….When it came to broadcasting the selection of what could be called sensuous love poems on the radio, it seemed appropriate to employ Marilyn Monroe as a means of holding them together.”