What Do Women Want?

“Salmon” by Kim Addonizio (2000)

In this poem, the poet insists that struggle and decay are part of the beauty of life and as deserving of the reader’s attention as triumph. The speaker disembarks from a tour bus to a bridge to watch spawning salmon but is soon drawn to the piles of dead fish on the bank, in “their gowns of black flies” (Line 18).

“I Wish I Want I Need” by Gail Mazur (2001)

Mazur’s speaker addresses the “you” of the poem in an intimate tone full of desire and regret. The poem offers a more melancholy consideration of yearning than Addonizio’s “What Do Women Want?” while echoing similar themes of female sexuality and agency.

“Wife” by Ada Limón (2018)

In this poem, the poet Ada Limón considers how “wife”—the role, the label—can restrict as much as Addonizio’s red dress liberates. The speaker longs for the emotional intimacy that she presumes of marriage, but she resists being boxed in by a role that, traditionally, denotes dull occupation more than passionate and reciprocal devotion.

“Four Sonnets (1922)” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1922)

This series of four sonnets represent the unconventional views and lifestyle of the poet, who enjoyed a sexual freedom rare for women of her generation. In these poems, the speaker addresses her lover(s) frankly, acknowledging carnal desire while making no promises of enduring love.

“Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” by Ross Gay (2015)

In this poem, the poet offers a consideration of an article of clothing—a button-down shirt—as a vehicle for reflection and self-actualization. In this single stanza poem, the shirt enables the speaker to imagine what it would be like to present himself in the world as a woman, and how that might change his perspective. In both their doing and their undoing, the buttons require a delicacy necessary for every kind of intimacy, from loving to dying.