Selected from work over a span of 30 years, Wright's poems [in The Double Tree: Selected Poems, 1942–1976] bear witness to her commitment to "poetry's ancient vow to celebrate lovelong/life's wholeness." She is Australian, and her bond to her native land and its once pastoral wildness is evident, expressed in lyric poems of skilled prosody. In her later work, the vow to celebrate radiance is harder to keep. As she sees the destruction to wildlife, water, and land, she is more convinced of human destructiveness, aware of the murderous heart as well as the passionate heart. She looks at opposites, seeking unity and form as "the compass heart swings seeking home/between the lands of life and death." Throughout we follow this poet's pilgrimage, respectful of her loving bonds to family, duty, passion, growth, and art. (pp. 1273-74)

Margaret Gibson, in Library Journal (reprinted from Library Journal, published by...