the most cursed poetic genre
 

Sam's thread about a new Dickinson movie reminded me of the worst thing in the poetic world: poems that try to delve into Emily Dickinson's sex life, or, what is worse, imagine the narrator having sex with Emily Dickinson. (Emily Dickinson wrote some good poems about her sex life, if people would bother to read them.)

I think it's pretty obvious why people (almost invariably men, to my knowledge) write these, so maybe that can't sustain discussion. But I'd be interested in compiling a list of poems in this irredeemable genre. Here are three that I can remember offhand (they're all awful):

The List

Billy Collins - Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
Terrance Hayes - American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin
Damon Norko - Love Lines (h/t Julie)
Nathaniel Tarn - In Love with the Queen of Amherst

Celebrity love and sex fantasy poems, even including those involving The Ultimate Celebrity--as in Donne's "Batter my heart, three-person'd God," St. John of the Cross's "One Darkest Night" (translated by Rhina P. Espaillat here), Rose Kelleher's "Schoolgirl Sonnets: Jesus", and of course James Kirkup's "The Love that Dares to Speak Its Name"--can be either sincere expressions of deep emotional connection and appreciation, or the most horribly blasphemous porn imaginable.

It's pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

I do get a bit annoyed when some heterosexual men seem determined to regard even tremendously accomplished women as primarily of interest for their reproductive parts. Every once in a while I'll say something grumpy about a poem that I think seems to do that--e.g., portrays Emily Dickinson or Mary Magdalene as a sex object.

Then other people whose opinions I respect usually say that they do not share my dour view, and that'll be the end of it. As it should be. A poem doesn't need my approval in order to have beauty and value for someone else.

I agree with your point in general, Julie, but I think Dickinson is a special case. It seems so obviously to be borne of a fascination with her cloistered life, and the presumption that this can't have satisfied her, that her life can't have been sexually rich enough for her. (Again, despite the existence of her wonderful poems exploring, in her inimitable way, her sexuality.) This comes out very explicitly in the Tarn poem, where he straight up says she needs "making love to" (why, goddamnit?). There's something fundamentally disrespectful about it in her case that there isn't in others. "Oh, she's not available? Well I could change her mind. I've got the good dick she can't resist."

And I think the fact that there are so many of these poems specifically about Dickinson diminishes them, if only by making them all have to overcome, not just the fact that they're trying to turn Dickinson into a sex object, but the fact that they're born cliché. Of course there's variation in quality: the Tarn is almost unreadably ugly no matter who it's about, whereas the Hayes has the making of a good poem except that in being about Emily Dickinson it ruins itself. But I've never seen such a poem succeed. I can't imagine how one could write one that did.

The Donne poem you posted is one of my favorites. I'll read the others later, when I get a chance.

Oh Aaron, what a challenge! :)

No, Mark, please, no

I didn't know the Tarn, but I somehow feel there are more than just these three poems. And I hate them. I remember coming across the Hayes poem in the collection and just being incredibly frustrated that he would resuscitate the genre.

I somehow don't think Collins' poem (which has the flaw of every Collins' poem of beating the reader over the head with the conceit and not getting out of the poem soon enough) was the first of them, yet I can't find any others.

Julie, I think these are categorically different than the poems you've posted.

EDIT: No, Mark, please, no.

Anyone who wants to write one of these poems should be legally required to first read every single poem in the genre and, for each one of them, write a five page essay explaining in detail why it's bad.

What a big Dick-
inson, he cried.
It's her Collected,
I replied.

Interesting thread, and I particularly enjoyed the last two comments (the Aaron-Mark exchange). :-)
I confess to having written a Dickinson poem, but no sex is involved. Which may be for the best.

John

Walter, lmao