When we think of Marilyn Monroe, we think of her with a copy of Ulysses — which is probably exactly how she wanted us to think of her, though not exactly the norm. Though the press famously referred to Marilyn and Arthur Miller as “The Egghead and The Hourglass,” Marilyn was no simple stunner — intellectually ambitious and endlessly curious, she had hundreds of books, loved to read, and even tried her hand at some of her own poetry, recently collected in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters . The poems reveal a lost girl reaching out for the world and swiping air, desperate to truly connect: “Only parts of us will ever/ touch parts of others –/ one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth./ We can only share the part that is within another’s knowing acceptable/ so one is for most part alone./ As it is meant to be in evidently in nature — at best perhaps it could make/ our understanding seek/ another’s loneliness out.” Read more and see Marilyn’s handwritten drafts over at Brain Pickings.