Erotic poetry

The Song is erotic poetry.  Is it pornography?  Carey Walsh ( Exquisite Desire ) rightly says No.  But what’s the difference?

Walsh suggests several differences.  Erotic writing forms empathy with the lovers by exploring desire and internal psyche, the psychology of wanting.  Pornography reduces people to objects, and body parts.  Erotic writing, further, honors time; it is about waiting and yearning; porn can’t wait.  Pornography, for the same reason, is repetitive; it’s only about the sex act itself, over and over again.  Erotica is about the “quality of the time spent waiting.”

The Song describes sex in metaphorical terms; it is “not trying to solve the mystery of love but rather is heightening the wonder.”  For this reason, erotica plays off the imagination: the Song “uses allusions and metaphors that force the reader to slow down and feel them” and thus “teases” and “draws the reader into the feelings of desire being described.”  Porn doesn’t have time for metaphor.  It doesn’t heighten wonder but strips sex to bodies in motion.

In short, erotica is about desiring, yearning human persons ; pornography is about sexual machines.