Judith Wright's collection of talks given "because she was invited" has as its first concern poetry in general. [Because I Was Invited] also presents a further group of poets treated in the manner of her previous book Preoccupations in Australian Poetry. The great merit of that book lay in her rejection of the usual critical approach, with its emphasis on style and technique at the expense of theme and philosophy….

In the broadest sense the issue of conservation underlies the entire work. Blake's strictures on the evils of "single vision" are central to her argument….

For all the seriousness and the prophetic content of her message these talks are never sermons. She is too good a poet to generalize. Her detail is always concrete, sharp, significant, whether in quotations selected from the poets she discusses, incidents that have occurred in the melancholy grind of teaching her poetry in...