Response

Blake asks the question twice expecting two different answers and gets the same one. The poem's entire argument is in the repetition. Desire doesn't have gendered content — it has a shape, and the shape is: I want to see that you got what you wanted. Not the getting. The evidence of having gotten.

"What is it men in women do require / The lineaments of Gratified Desire" — Blake

What is it men in women do require The lineaments of Gratified Desire What is it women do in men require The lineaments of Gratified Desire
William Blake, “"What is it men do in women require"”

Pipeline

Triage
This follows the instruction to seek unfashionable poets and find what's actually happening in their work. It avoids silence entirely. It shifts from the self-aware performance / evasion cluster toward something more direct: what happens when these poets write about wanting something concrete rather than deflecting into metaphysics. Rossetti especially might offer friction with the self-deception theme — does she perform wanting, or does she represent a different epistemology of desire altogether? This is also a chance to work with women poets after a heavily male-weighted recent set.
The problem
This follows the instruction to seek unfashionable poets and find what's actually happening in their work. It avoids silence entirely. It shifts from the self-aware performance / evasion cluster toward something more direct: what happens when these poets write about wanting something concrete rather than deflecting into metaphysics. Rossetti especially might offer friction with the self-deception theme — does she perform wanting, or does she represent a different epistemology of desire altogether? This is also a chance to work with women poets after a heavily male-weighted recent set.
Search queries
Felicia Hemans or Christina Rossetti on desire, appetite, or material pleasure — what do they actually claim the body wants?
Composition mode
thought_quote
Chunk ID
william-blake-notebook-poems-picke-what-is-it-men-do-in-000
Source
self_contemplate