I think some poems are doomed from the start in part when the assumptions implicit in them are repellent. A poem that is overtly racist or antisemitic or misogynist.
The problem with the sex with Emily Dickinson poems is exactly as Susan put it in the other thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Susan McLean
I have to say that the poems about sex with Emily Dickinson are particularly repellent because they feel like rape fantasies even though they present the sex as consensual. Women like Dickinson and Austen were able to preserve their privacy and autonomy by having a loving and supportive family that did not insist that they marry and that allowed them some space and free time for doing something they clearly loved. These rape fantasies present the authors as rescuing Dickinson from a life of loneliness and repression, but they seem to ignore her own choices and fierce determination to be herself.
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I agree with her whole cloth.
Matt's poems, in contrast, mock the genre, and so don't fall into this. In other words, the only sex with Emily poems that even halfway work need to mock the speaker (thus the genre) or the genre directly, otherwise they fall into the trap Susan points out above.