Defining differences porno, erotic

[greenmountaineer]

I'm Pavlovian with this.

When the bell rings after reading a piece in "New Poems," and my first thought is "ooh, Baby, Baby, yeah, Baby, Baby," it's porn.

On the other hand (yes, hand), if I think of Yeats' "pale blossoms on the breast," it's erotica.

I used to salivate long ago when the bell rang after the former. The best I can do now is growl.

 

[legerdemer]

I'm Pavlovian with this.

When the bell rings after reading a piece in "New Poems," and my first thought is "ooh, Baby, Baby, yeah, Baby, Baby," it's porn.

On the other hand (yes, hand), if I think of Yeats' "pale blossoms on the breast," it's erotica.

I used to salivate long ago when the bell rang after the former. The best I can do now is growl.

Bingo! I really wish there was a way to save posts I really like. This is one of those I really love.

 

[Ashesh9]

Pornorotica sounds too porny.


Too porny or too horny , Neo ??!

 

[Tzara]

OK. Here's one of my examples of what I think of as erotic poetry:

Phenomenology of the Prick
Frank Bidart

You say, Let’s get naked. It’s 1962; the world
is changing, or has changed, or is about to change;
we want to get naked. Seven or eight old friends

want to see certain bodies that for years we’ve
guessed at, imagined. For me, not
certain bodies: one. Yours. You know that.

We get naked. The room
is dark; shadows against the windows’
light night sky; then you approach your wife. You light

a cigarette, allowing me to see what is forbidden to see.
You make sure I see it hard.
You make sure I see it hard

only once. A year earlier, through the high partition between cafeteria
booths, invisible I hear you say you can get Frank’s
car keys tonight. Frank, you laugh, will do anything I want.

You seem satisfied. This night, as they say,
completed something. After five years of my
obsession with you, without seeming to will it you

managed to let me see it hard. Were you
giving me a gift. Did you want fixed in my brain
what I will not ever possess. Were you giving me

a gift that cannot be possessed. You make sure
I see how hard
your wife makes it. You light a cigarette.


Source: Star Dust (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).​

I identify with this poem in the same way I identify with Jane Austen's Persuasion or Pride and Prejudice.

That I do not personally identify with the narrator of the work--a gay man in the case of Bidart's poem or a young Englishwoman in the case of Austen's novels-- doesn't matter. I identify with the narrator's feelings.

Bidart's poem is sexually meaningful to me because, while I don't identify with the same-sex attraction, I very much identify with the feeling of one's obsession sexually taunting one.

The I don't want you myself, but I want you to want me thing.

It's not a great poem, but, I think, an affecting one. One I found affecting, anyway.

{sorry for the interruption--please resume your normal broadcasting}

 

[Angeline]

OK. Here's one of my examples of what I think of as erotic poetry:

Phenomenology of the Prick
Frank Bidart

You say, Let’s get naked. It’s 1962; the world
is changing, or has changed, or is about to change;
we want to get naked. Seven or eight old friends

want to see certain bodies that for years we’ve
guessed at, imagined. For me, not
certain bodies: one. Yours. You know that.

We get naked. The room
is dark; shadows against the windows’
light night sky; then you approach your wife. You light

a cigarette, allowing me to see what is forbidden to see.
You make sure I see it hard.
You make sure I see it hard

only once. A year earlier, through the high partition between cafeteria
booths, invisible I hear you say you can get Frank’s
car keys tonight. Frank, you laugh, will do anything I want.

You seem satisfied. This night, as they say,
completed something. After five years of my
obsession with you, without seeming to will it you

managed to let me see it hard. Were you
giving me a gift. Did you want fixed in my brain
what I will not ever possess. Were you giving me

a gift that cannot be possessed. You make sure
I see how hard
your wife makes it. You light a cigarette.


Source: Star Dust (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).​

I identify with this poem in the same way I identify with Jane Austen's Persuasion or Pride and Prejudice.

That I do not personally identify with the narrator of the work--a gay man in the case of Bidart's poem or a young Englishwoman in the case of Austen's novels-- doesn't matter. I identify with the narrator's feelings.

Bidart's poem is sexually meaningful to me because, while I don't identify with the same-sex attraction, I very much identify with the feeling of one's obsession sexually taunting one.

The I don't want you myself, but I want you to want me thing.

It's not a great poem, but, I think, an affecting one. One I found affecting, anyway.

{sorry for the interruption--please resume your normal broadcasting}

It's a very good poem and certainly erotic. And affecting in that the image does stay with you.

Who are you interrupting? You're part of the family!

 

[Tzara]

It's a very good poem and erotic. And affecting in that the image does stay with you.

The title is awful, though, at least.

I've been thinking about this, and I'm now wondering if the difference is how emotion is treated between porn and erotica. Both are intended to arouse. But porn perhaps is intended only to arouse, whereas erotica is intended to arouse and to form some kind of sympathetic or empathetic bond. Emotion is essential as part of the sexual experience.

So, in this view, porn has no emotional component (note that this ignores lust as emotion--or at least as a contemplative emotion), but "erotica" does.

I guess the Bidart poem works for me because I can empathize with the narrator's experience, even though it is not something that would be personally arousing to me. I can relate to the experience (the sexual taunting, the unrequited desire) without identifying with the homosexual nature of it.

Or something like that.