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An Insomniac’s Slumber Party With Marilyn Monroe
PANK POETRY CONTEST WINNER
Heidi Seaborn’s astonishing second collection of poems, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a middle-of-the-night poetic conversation with Marilyn Monroe that explores obsessions, addictions, abuse, objectification, marriage, work, children, childlessness and death. Pressing on the themes of her acclaimed debut, Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do}, Seaborn illuminates the biographical and emotional journey of Marilyn as intimacies whispered between two women. These are women who have lived “on the glittering edge” and know that when a third husband “draws a blank page from his typewriter,” it means she needs to go to work in a world dominated by men. In An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn is a resilient, intelligent feminist who understands how to accumulate and wield power in the 1950’s. She is also vulnerable, exploited, and broken in so many ways. We see the speaker discover Marilyn until “then she is everywhere,” a haunting presence that becomes both muse and reflection. Seaborn invites us into the poetic soul of the world’s most famous woman with poems that celebrate and mourn. An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a sequined meditation on what keeps us up at night and what fills our dreams.
Praise:
“An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a moving interrogation of our infatuation with celebrities and our performance culture.” ~The Washington Post
“I too have lived on that glittering edge” Heidi Seaborn writes. Indeed. Seaborn’s voice is lively and urbane; vivid pains and pleasures abound on every page of this lush, glitteringly alive new book of poems.” ~Deborah Landau, Author of Soft Targets
“In Heidi Seaborn’s An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn is a voice, a mirror, an Other, a symbol, a goddess, and an archetype. She is also a conveyance for the speaker’s autobiographical material—insomnia, sleeping pills, dangerous embodiment, and lethal disembodiment, until a kiss is nothing but “a transaction of air” and breasts are “tricksters—…pretend(ing) / to guard a heart.” Marilyn enacts, for Seaborn, the objectification women are impaled upon, woman as Selfie, as edible subject, Norman Mailer’s “sweet / bursting peach,” Andy Warhol’s “violent bursting pomegranate.” Indeed, she is the whole alphabet, “mistress, maid, momma, mother, Madonna, mouth, mink, / narcotic, nurse, nutcase, oyster, oh baby.” By the end, the speaker’s empathic identification with her subject is complete, narrating, in tandem with Marilyn, her last hours, exposing “the grief in glamour,” and finally striding off solo, released, as the credits roll. Something profound has shifted. The insomniac sleeps. For all of its intensity, this collection is as brilliantly composed as a Dior dress. I am in love and in awe.”~Diane Seuss, Author of frank: sonnets
“Heidi Seaborn's An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is warning, celebration, homage, critique: at the center of this collection is the icon of all icons, a Marilyn Monroe whom Seaborn excavates and revitalizes, making poems out of documents, letters, photos, empathy, and projection. How much can anyone really understand of another's life, especially a life as examined and invented as Monroe's? And isn't every portrait also, as you'll find here, a portrait of its maker? These questions, like the aftershocks of sexism, like the tiny white Ambien pill, like the eerie dreads of the sleepless, course through these poems of obsession to give us a lively and novel meditation on fame, addiction, loneliness, and the performance of femininity, where breasts are called ‘precious tickets to a carnival,’ where ‘charm becomes armor‘." ~Catherine Barnett, Author of Human Hours
"Everywhere and nowhere, so conscious of being looked at, but never actually seen, Marilyn Monroe often feels like a precursor of our times. Tearing a page from the pulp films of Norma Jean Baker's era, Heidi Seaborn has crafted a moonlit book in conversation with her. To Seaborn, Marilyn is a guardian spirit, troubled muse, a midnight oracle. Without promising insight, she delivers something more: a freshly captured glimpse of the worlds Marilyn haunts still." ~John Freeman, Author and Editor of Freeman’s
“In this exquisite poetry book, Seaborn follows Marilyn Monroe from an orphanage in Los Angeles to her rise as a sex-kitten bomb shell blowing kisses. Decades after her death, the reader comes to feel real emotion for Monroe’s struggle with insomnia, an abusive foster father and three husbands, and the news of her overdose. In the quiet genius of the poems, Seaborn makes us hope—absurdly, against all odds—for a different ending to the story and shows us that the public adoration of beautiful women often aspires to bed and destroy them at the same time. Instead, Seaborn asks, what if were to give Monroe’s ghost her body, her name, the color of her hair? What if this time ...
Heidi Seaborn’s astonishing second collection of poems, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a middle-of-the-night poetic conversation with Marilyn Monroe that explores obsessions, addictions, abuse, objectification, marriage, work, children, childlessness and death. Pressing on the themes of her acclaimed debut, Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do}, Seaborn illuminates the biographical and emotional journey of Marilyn as intimacies whispered between two women. These are women who have lived “on the glittering edge” and know that when a third husband “draws a blank page from his typewriter,” it means she needs to go to work in a world dominated by men. In An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn is a resilient, intelligent feminist who understands how to accumulate and wield power in the 1950’s. She is also vulnerable, exploited, and broken in so many ways. We see the speaker discover Marilyn until “then she is everywhere,” a haunting presence that becomes both muse and reflection. Seaborn invites us into the poetic soul of the world’s most famous woman with poems that celebrate and mourn. An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a sequined meditation on what keeps us up at night and what fills our dreams.
Praise:
“An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a moving interrogation of our infatuation with celebrities and our performance culture.” ~The Washington Post
“I too have lived on that glittering edge” Heidi Seaborn writes. Indeed. Seaborn’s voice is lively and urbane; vivid pains and pleasures abound on every page of this lush, glitteringly alive new book of poems.” ~Deborah Landau, Author of Soft Targets
“In Heidi Seaborn’s An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn is a voice, a mirror, an Other, a symbol, a goddess, and an archetype. She is also a conveyance for the speaker’s autobiographical material—insomnia, sleeping pills, dangerous embodiment, and lethal disembodiment, until a kiss is nothing but “a transaction of air” and breasts are “tricksters—…pretend(ing) / to guard a heart.” Marilyn enacts, for Seaborn, the objectification women are impaled upon, woman as Selfie, as edible subject, Norman Mailer’s “sweet / bursting peach,” Andy Warhol’s “violent bursting pomegranate.” Indeed, she is the whole alphabet, “mistress, maid, momma, mother, Madonna, mouth, mink, / narcotic, nurse, nutcase, oyster, oh baby.” By the end, the speaker’s empathic identification with her subject is complete, narrating, in tandem with Marilyn, her last hours, exposing “the grief in glamour,” and finally striding off solo, released, as the credits roll. Something profound has shifted. The insomniac sleeps. For all of its intensity, this collection is as brilliantly composed as a Dior dress. I am in love and in awe.”~Diane Seuss, Author of frank: sonnets
“Heidi Seaborn's An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is warning, celebration, homage, critique: at the center of this collection is the icon of all icons, a Marilyn Monroe whom Seaborn excavates and revitalizes, making poems out of documents, letters, photos, empathy, and projection. How much can anyone really understand of another's life, especially a life as examined and invented as Monroe's? And isn't every portrait also, as you'll find here, a portrait of its maker? These questions, like the aftershocks of sexism, like the tiny white Ambien pill, like the eerie dreads of the sleepless, course through these poems of obsession to give us a lively and novel meditation on fame, addiction, loneliness, and the performance of femininity, where breasts are called ‘precious tickets to a carnival,’ where ‘charm becomes armor‘." ~Catherine Barnett, Author of Human Hours
"Everywhere and nowhere, so conscious of being looked at, but never actually seen, Marilyn Monroe often feels like a precursor of our times. Tearing a page from the pulp films of Norma Jean Baker's era, Heidi Seaborn has crafted a moonlit book in conversation with her. To Seaborn, Marilyn is a guardian spirit, troubled muse, a midnight oracle. Without promising insight, she delivers something more: a freshly captured glimpse of the worlds Marilyn haunts still." ~John Freeman, Author and Editor of Freeman’s
“In this exquisite poetry book, Seaborn follows Marilyn Monroe from an orphanage in Los Angeles to her rise as a sex-kitten bomb shell blowing kisses. Decades after her death, the reader comes to feel real emotion for Monroe’s struggle with insomnia, an abusive foster father and three husbands, and the news of her overdose. In the quiet genius of the poems, Seaborn makes us hope—absurdly, against all odds—for a different ending to the story and shows us that the public adoration of beautiful women often aspires to bed and destroy them at the same time. Instead, Seaborn asks, what if were to give Monroe’s ghost her body, her name, the color of her hair? What if this time ...
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
23 people want to read
About the author
Heidi Seaborn
9 books16 followersHeidi Seaborn wrote poetry as a teenager then pursued a career as a communications executive, serving as Chief Communications Officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the European CEO for a major global communications firm and elsewhere. She moved 27 times, raised three children, divorced, remarried and then after a 40-year hiatus, returned to poetry in 2016. Since then, she’s authored two full-length collections of poetry, including PANK Books 2020 Poetry Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021), Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press, 2019) and three chapbooks of poetry including the 2020 Comstock Review Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks (2021), as well as Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Once a Diva (dancing girl press, 2021). She’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Brevity, Copper Nickel, The Cortland Review, The Financial Times, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Washington Post and elsewhere. She is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Stanford University. After living all over the world, she now resides in her hometown of Seattle.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 21, 2023
An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, by Heidi Seaborn is brilliant. It was her MFA project to write in Marilyn Monroe's persona without knowing much about her when she started. The depth of her research is great and she gets to the heart of the child/girl/woman Marilyn was in this book that explores issues with insomnia, depression, the travails of Hollywood stardom, multiple marriages and what that meant for women in the 1950s & 60s.
In the poem "Refusing to Bow" she writes:
Really.
Friends even. Take Capote.
He knew to steer her by the elbow into a bar
to slowly sip her secrets
down his throat
then parade her
like a poodle leashing along Lexington.
Or in the poem "Blonde is a Color"
Mailer called her "sweet
bursting peach,"
having never met her.
His fantasy:
that he could save her from other
men like him.
And this whole poem [1934—Norma Jean at age 8]
I was never the girl you keep
like a bowl on a shelf.
This house. My bowl—
the littlest, mustard
yellow, chipped on its lip
with a crack down the side
that sweated soup when us kids
elbowed round the formica table.
Seaborn provides a voice for Marilyn, "this short flaming life—" with percise, perfect poetry. Marilyn, a reader, would love this book.
In the poem "Refusing to Bow" she writes:
Really.
Friends even. Take Capote.
He knew to steer her by the elbow into a bar
to slowly sip her secrets
down his throat
then parade her
like a poodle leashing along Lexington.
Or in the poem "Blonde is a Color"
Mailer called her "sweet
bursting peach,"
having never met her.
His fantasy:
that he could save her from other
men like him.
And this whole poem [1934—Norma Jean at age 8]
I was never the girl you keep
like a bowl on a shelf.
This house. My bowl—
the littlest, mustard
yellow, chipped on its lip
with a crack down the side
that sweated soup when us kids
elbowed round the formica table.
Seaborn provides a voice for Marilyn, "this short flaming life—" with percise, perfect poetry. Marilyn, a reader, would love this book.
May 18, 2023
I read a couple of pages 2 months ago, then I read all the rest in one lovely vacation day. There are essays and poetry in this collection. I met the author at a book event in Seattle (she lives somewhere nearby too) and I loved her immediately. So I bought this and a poetry collection. The author calls these persona poetry. A new to me term, but I’m a poetry novice.
I wouldn’t have said I’m a Marilyn Monroe fan before, but now I feel I know so much more than the iconic Marilyn of popular culture. She was smart and strong, but also plagued with a terrible upbringing and unhappy marriages. And insomnia. Big time. An affliction shared with the author and perhaps the cause of Marilyn’s death.
It is high praise from me to say that I enjoyed the poems in this maybe even as much as the essays.
I wouldn’t have said I’m a Marilyn Monroe fan before, but now I feel I know so much more than the iconic Marilyn of popular culture. She was smart and strong, but also plagued with a terrible upbringing and unhappy marriages. And insomnia. Big time. An affliction shared with the author and perhaps the cause of Marilyn’s death.
It is high praise from me to say that I enjoyed the poems in this maybe even as much as the essays.
August 14, 2021
I reviewed this collection online for THE SHORE. You can access the review here: https://www.theshorepoetry.org/shore-....
August 15, 2021
In An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (PANK Books, 2021), Heidi Seaborn mines a deep vein of popular culture. Weaving her own language together with fragments from Monroe’s journals and notes, as well movie lines, Seaborn gives us the Monroe that we know: “a gardenia in a cellophane box,” a “femme fatale,” and more importantly, the Monroe that we may be less familiar with: a woman who “blow[s] a kiss/ that is really nothing/ a transaction of air,” a woman who silently pleads with a photographer to “Please leave something/ ablur,” a woman who reads James Joyce’s Ulysses during breaks on a movie set. Seaborn’s incisive portrayals of a movie star objectified by men and Hollywood resonate strongly in the #MeToo era.
While the author examines the abuses and misuses Monroe suffered, this book is also playful and fun to read. One of my favorite pieces, “O Breasts,” somehow comes across as an ode of celebration, while at the same time revealing these body parts as the trouble makers they are: “O precious tickets/ to a carnival,” “O tricksters.” This one made me laugh out loud because it is so true.
Seaborn is inventive in her use and variety of form. The poet writes in free verse and employs stanzas of irregular length as well as couplets and triplets. She also includes an acrostic and a kick-ass abecedarian titled “Hey,” and she experiments a bit, such as in the poem “There Was No Honeymoon” about Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller. Seaborn writes [You] “discover/ he has written/ your dialogue/ in the margin.” She cleverly arranges most of the poem in a narrow column on the right side of the page, leaving a huge expanse of white space. Both the space and the “marginalized” words speak volumes about how Monroe took a backseat to her husband in the relationship. An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe won the Pank Poetry Prize, and I suspect it will snag more awards in the future.
While the author examines the abuses and misuses Monroe suffered, this book is also playful and fun to read. One of my favorite pieces, “O Breasts,” somehow comes across as an ode of celebration, while at the same time revealing these body parts as the trouble makers they are: “O precious tickets/ to a carnival,” “O tricksters.” This one made me laugh out loud because it is so true.
Seaborn is inventive in her use and variety of form. The poet writes in free verse and employs stanzas of irregular length as well as couplets and triplets. She also includes an acrostic and a kick-ass abecedarian titled “Hey,” and she experiments a bit, such as in the poem “There Was No Honeymoon” about Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller. Seaborn writes [You] “discover/ he has written/ your dialogue/ in the margin.” She cleverly arranges most of the poem in a narrow column on the right side of the page, leaving a huge expanse of white space. Both the space and the “marginalized” words speak volumes about how Monroe took a backseat to her husband in the relationship. An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe won the Pank Poetry Prize, and I suspect it will snag more awards in the future.
July 7, 2021
If I'd started in on "An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe" at bedtime, I'd have stayed up late, late to finish it. It is poetry to read in a sweep, as I just have--which I realize I do when a book glues me to the sofa/bed. Don your finest pj's and settle in. Seaborn's poems are sharp and colorful and glittery and fruity and sugary and historical and intimate. They can dazzle or hurt your eyes. Meticulously-researched, or experienced. The structure appealed. Although sections were untitled, there are recognizable clusters of poems, such as those inspired by famous photographs of MM. Sprinkled through the whole, the poet's Insomnia Diary, pops up like an insomniac itself--unable to drift off.
August 4, 2021
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to have been Norma Jean/Marilyn? Well, wonder no more! Heidi Seaborn did a fantastic job of researching and imagining and then putting all those imaginings into poems.
If you plan on your own slumber party with Marilyn, put on your sexiest and go to bed early, because once you start these poems, you will resent having to put the book down before you are finished reading.
I very seldom suggest you read a book of poetry straight through, but these just naturally lead one to the other and you just naturally have to go to the next, the next, the next, the…
I laughed. I became intimate with anger. I cried. And when the book was finished, I started over again!
If you plan on your own slumber party with Marilyn, put on your sexiest and go to bed early, because once you start these poems, you will resent having to put the book down before you are finished reading.
I very seldom suggest you read a book of poetry straight through, but these just naturally lead one to the other and you just naturally have to go to the next, the next, the next, the…
I laughed. I became intimate with anger. I cried. And when the book was finished, I started over again!
August 5, 2021
Heidi Seaborn’s award winning book of poetry An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe deserves 5 stars for sure! I loved her use of fruit and flowers and colors and especially bees to bring her words to life.
From Hello, it’s Me Marilyn
“I feel lost in someone’s garden -
ivy and jasmine tangle
a swarm of bees billowing
the lavender.
They honey & swirl the air. I’m in such a mood”
And my favorite, Earthbound
“O lemon-
I know nothing so sweet.
Rough-fleshed fallen fruit.
We are earthbound.”
And from the poem titled 7:27 pm
“I’m staying in with my hive.
I’m their queen, pillowed
by the buzz-“
This book will charm all lucky readers and make everyone a fan of Heidi Seaborn and her poetry.
From Hello, it’s Me Marilyn
“I feel lost in someone’s garden -
ivy and jasmine tangle
a swarm of bees billowing
the lavender.
They honey & swirl the air. I’m in such a mood”
And my favorite, Earthbound
“O lemon-
I know nothing so sweet.
Rough-fleshed fallen fruit.
We are earthbound.”
And from the poem titled 7:27 pm
“I’m staying in with my hive.
I’m their queen, pillowed
by the buzz-“
This book will charm all lucky readers and make everyone a fan of Heidi Seaborn and her poetry.
July 19, 2021
If you've worn lipstick for a reason or not worn it for the same reason, if you've rumble through your or another's top dresser drawer and found the secret thing or the pill or found nothing intimate to you or another women, if LA with its sun and gardens and dawn flood your peripheral vision, if Califonia-dreaming is a real memory or are only myths that promise sex and fame and riches, you will meld with this book. You will know about more than the poems' speaker and Marilyn Monroe. You will know about women and sleep and being not-a-person but an object of perverse desire in an American landscape that is today and the America of the famed mid-century.
July 13, 2021
In "An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe," the accomplished poet, Heidi Seaborn, has crafted a collection of short poems about Marilyn Monroe into a page turner that can’t be put down until the final line. Poems that confront the tragedy of childhood abandonment, addiction and early death, are infused with an irresistible pastel beauty—the voluptuousness of ripe fruit. You needn’t be a Marilyn fan to derive deep pleasure from savoring this memorable collection
July 10, 2021
A must read for serious poets, Marilyn fans and and all those who are now following Heidi Seaborn's prize winning writing and poetry . This beautiful book is a journey worth following.
April 16, 2023
A lovely collection about/with Marilyn Monroe. I thought Seaborn's approach created a mosaic effect as she explored Marilyn's life through various ephemera and poetic forms.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews