That would be the very script of the show we’re watching, which is indeed about Norma Jeane Baker. If you don’t know that Norma Jeane was Monroe’s birth name, I wish you much luck in following this show. For Ms. Carson has merged Monroe with another much-maligned sex object, Helen of Troy. But she, it turns out, was only a phantasm or (to use a word much savored in Ms. Carson’s poem) a cloud. Norma Jeane is further conflated with another abductee from Greek mythology, Persephone, especially as she was conjured by the 20th-century British poet Stevie Smith.

Source: New York Times April 10, 2019 16:11 UTC