SOURCE: "Alive, Fourth Quarter and Phantom Dwelling" in Flame and Shadow: A Study of Judith Wright's Poetry, University of Queensland Press, 1991, pp. 176–205, 210.

In this excerpt, Walker argues that Wright's collections Fourth Quarter and Phantom Dwelling represent a growth in the poet's already estimable talent and vision. Walker contends that in these books Wright brings a variety of new influences and insights to bear on old themes, answering with clarity questions left open by old poems, and finding peace through reconciliation where once she found conflict.

The poems of Fourth Quarter represent a break-through into a newer and more vigorous poetic world; an expression of that acceptance which [the poem] "Shadow" anticipated, but which the poems of Alive did not quite achieve. This is one of the most thematically unified of Wright's volumes, for the collection as a whole is a celebration of the feminine principle, of intuition, imagination...