Matt – 'phalloventriloquist' is a brilliant word and those are great.
Hey Andrew – anyone who claims never to have any thoughts that they wouldn't be immediately comfortable sharing is probably lying. I think one of the beautiful things about poetry is that it isn't journalism. It can be a space in language for the 'weird and problematic' to express itself, for the unconscious to sift and organise itself without having to worry about what might be socially acceptable. If the resulting poem reveals nothing but ugliness then it's failed. But it needn't.
One of Aaron's original main objections to this niche genre was that it is cliched; there are too many of them, so they are doomed from the start. The first part is probably true, but the second isn't necessarily. Yes, if all a hypothetical 'Emily' poem reveals is a sort of smirking fantasy about the speaker's opinion of his own sexual magnetism, then it's going to be pretty bad. But people are fascinated by Dickinson and by the idea of the genius / self-imposed recluse in general. And how her attitude to publishing, and company, and sex might be somehow interlinked. People – men and women – may empathise with that reclusiveness, and even have erotic fantasies about somehow overcoming it for both of them. These thoughts can be messy and uncomfortable, but there's no point pretending they don't exist. I don't know what the current consensus is on whether Dickinson was actually a lesbian, and this would obviously complicate things from the standpoint of a male writer, but there's nothing inherently wrong with imagining a sexual relationship with this person, unless one automatically thinks of consensual sex as an act of aggression. In her later years she didn't much like going outside either. Would a poem imagining going for a walk with her be equally problematic?
The risk of failure is high with this subject, but I think a good poem is possible, that's all. I don't think mine is it btw. But yes, at least I'm not in jail, so I should be grateful.
Apologies for the lack of laughs in this thread. Start the 'sex with Gerard' one!
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