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John K. EwersTHE GENIUS OF JUDITH WRIGHTBefore attempting to come to terms withJudith Wright's latest volume. The Other Half(Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1966, $1.95), Ipropose, first to take a brief sampling of whatcritics and reviewers had to say about herearlier work as it appeared, and then to examineit in more detail as a whole. This willenable us to estabhsh her poetic background,to mark some common factors to be found inall her poetry and the differences that emergefrom time to time.Much credit is due to C. B. Christesen, editorof Meanjin in which a number of her poemshad already appeared, for publishing her firstbook. The Moving Image (1946). This broughtnothing but praise from the critics. ProfessorS. Musgrove said: "This book confirms whatwe have for some time suspected from JudithWright's periodical pieces, that she is the onlypoet among the younger Australians who canchallenge the stature of R. D. FitzGerald.''^Nan McDonald, herself a poet, wrote: "Afterwading through many books of verse whereonly a faint glimmer of poetry haunts the bogof words, the reader can ask nothing betterthan to be dealt the old famihar blow thatsays, beyond all shadow of doubt, 'This ispoetry'. Judith Wright's first book. The MovingImage, does that."- Woman to Man (1949)was no less enthusiastically received. By thetime H. M. Green had published the secondedition of his anthology. Modern AustralianPoetry, in 1952, he was prepared on the evidenceof these two volumes alone to place her"among the principal poets writing in Englishtoday".^ Still confining himself to these twobooks. Green amplified this further in his AHistory of Australian Literature, Vol. 2, 1923-1950: "A couple of lines that certainly andseveral whole poems that probably belong toworld literature; half a dozen poems that areamong the best of their kind in the presentday: it is an amazing production for a womanof thirty-five, and it fixes Judith Wright's position,alongside those of FitzGerald and Slessor,among the first of Uving poets, in Australia orelsewhere."*There was less enthusiasm for the thirdvolume. The Gateway (1953). Elyne MitcheUregretted that the language and the imagerywere "similar to those recording the spiritualjourneys of other poets",^ and T. Inglis Moorefound "a relaxing of the high tension, a recurringsense of uncertainty, a feeling that thepoet has stopped on her path to look around,unsure of her way".^ About the fourth volume.The Two Fires (1955) the critics themselveswere divided. Someone writing inSoutherly, No. 2, 1956, with the initials of J.T.declared that many poems "lend colour to asuspicion that the author is forcing her art".He even went so far as to suggest that "halfbakedcritics or importunate publishers mayhave hurried this fine poet into putting out afourth book before she was ready to do so".^But Robert D. FitzGerald (who is certainlyno "half-baked critic") after commenting onthe changing direction shown in this new volume,said "the earUer impressions return ofpoetry that has almost everything we could askof it", adding later that "one is continuouslyconscious of a power of vision beyond theordinary sight of mankind".* In the finalchapter of his History already referred to—achapter bringing the record up to 1960—H.M. Green amended his previously expressedopinion that Judith Wright was "essentiallylyrist rather than intellectual".^ This- he said,no longer held, for her third and fourth booksshowed her "moving inward, less often makingher vision concrete and lyrical with picturesand lovely images and more often realizingsome inner experience". He conceded that thisshowed "her poetic attitude is not static, an42 WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1968