I believe that Sexton calls her poem a spoof because it makes fun of the original story of Noah's ark. As Group C discussed, there was a fair amount of allusion to the Judeo-Christian story of the origins of life, both with the missile as an Ark and a synthetic Garden of Eden, complete with fruit. However, to me it seems a mockery rather than a synthesis of science and religion – a spoof. It subverts the core elements of the original bible stories: Life on Venus wasn't created by a god, it was brought there by two scientists.
The poem gives the impression that the scientists initially went there to just do research on the different animals they brought, which had presumably either been genetically engineered to survive in Venus's climate, or Venus might have been terraformed before the events of the poem. After the Earth fell into chaos, the scientists got bored and depressed, started running out of room in their cages, and just let the animals go. There weren't any grand intentions in mind, things happened by accident.
In the bible, Noah created the ark specifically so that life could continue on living. In Sexton's poem, the "ark" seems to be the very cause of the turmoil that destroys human life on Earth - if the ark hadn't been launched, life wouldn't have had to be "saved" in the first place.
This is certainly a twist on the biblical myths involving the careful design and creation of life, and its preservation.
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