​Marilyn Looks at Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, 1956, by Grace Anne Anderson

Marilyn Looks at Little Dancer (Degas), photography by John Huston (USA) 1956

​Marilyn Looks at Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, 1956
 
When Degas first showed his sculpture, she was wax
and wore human hair tied up with a ribbon.
 
Degas captured her standing in casual fourth,
and we immortalized her, her beeswax body now bronze.
 
Huston photographed Marilyn looking at her
in a movie studio boss’ house over a half-century later,
 
and in the photograph, we want to think Marilyn admires her, that she identifies with the sculpture
 
that was once a real girl, a Paris Opera ballet student
with a name: Marie. But Marilyn knows there is a version
 
of Marie in the nude, which now lives in Washington, DC, 
reminding us that an artist who puts clothing
 
on a piece was compelled to first think of it naked.
Of course Marilyn sees this, she sees Marie made object
 
now, still, in another man’s house, her innocence made centerpiece, 
and it is of course, beautiful, which is why it has been taken by force.
 
People say Marilyn wept when she saw Marie,
and I believe it. In the photo,
 
Huston makes Marilyn his subject, gazing at Marie.
He wants us to see Marilyn doing what others have done to her.
 
But I like to think Marilyn is looking at the wall
behind Marie. The wall made important not
 
by what hangs on it, but by what it defines,
by the space it encloses, the fourteen year-old girl
 
and the woman admiring the air between them she wishes to occupy. And Marie?
 
She is looking outward. She sees something up ahead.

Grace Anne Anderson

Grace Anne Anderson lives and dances in Spokane, WA, where she recently completed her MFA at Eastern Washington University and served as poetry editor for Willow Springs Magazine. Her poems can be found on Spokane's Public Radio, forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.