The Erotic vs. the Pornographic in Contemporary Poetry

At Jacket2, Mia You's commentary "Not safe for porn: The erotic vs. the pornographic," starts with Audre Lorde's reminders, from You's very blue edition of the book Sister Outsider, in order to situate our readings and gradually distinguish the erotic from the pornographic.

So I don’t see the erotic as a means for, or a mode to realize, the pornographic. Lorde writes that the pornographic is the opposite of the erotic; “pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic.” The erotic and the pornographic do not work toward the same ends, vie for the same conclusion. If there is confusion, conflation, between the erotic and the pornographic, it is because the pornographic is the spectacle-as-substitute for the erotic, it is the false and empty demand that the erotic must have a fixed purpose, must have a clear teleology.

But for me, the erotic is there. It exists.

You cites the work of Saeed Jones, Ariana Reines, Keston Sutherland, Rob Halpern, and others who work within this conversation.

And it’s there, still and adamantly there, when Saeed Jones writes in “Boy in a Whalebone Corset,”

when night throws itself against
the wall, when Nina Simone sings
in the next room without her body
and I’m against the wall, bruised
but out of mine: dream-headed
with my corset still on, stays
slightly less tight, bones against
bones, broken glass on the floor,
dance steps for a waltz
with no partner

But it’s not there, when Ariana Reines writes in “When I Looked at Your Cock My Imagination Died,”

the fat guy shakes his dick on me and when i fuk you i mean when you plow my asshole like they say my two tits like greased basketballs bouncing bouncing bouncing

It’s not there, when Keston Sutherland writes in The Odes to TL61P,

what you really want is not to be the genitals fucking her ass, but to be her, to own the ass and be entitled to withdraw it; or it, open but entitled to be withdrawn; to be passive and open and plastic and traded in light; and because in the end virtual exploitation is for consenting adults less toxis than real, on condition that on principle you do not pay for it

And it’s not there, no, in Rob Halpern's Common Place.

That’s not to say that nothing is there. Something is there, certainly. And that's not to say that there can't be several uses of the pornographic, including critical and subversive ones. But still, to me, this is pornography and not the erotic.

The erotic doesn’t operate on the level of nouns...

Read it all at Jacket2.