SOURCE: "The Poetry of Judith Wright," in Meanjin, Vol. XII, No. 3, September, 1953, pp. 255–67.

Here, Brissenden examines Wright's first three volumes of poetry. The critic praises many aspects of the poet's work, but worries that the metaphysical panderings in the third volume, The Gateway, denote a shift in Wright's focus, "away from the personal, the particular and the dramatic towards the abstract and the impersonal. "

When Judith Wright's first book, The Moving Image, appeared it was greeted by the critics with enthusiasm, one writer going so far as to declare that its publication was 'the most important poetic event of 1946'. Another claimed that 'no book of poems has received such an enthusiastic reception here since O'Dowd's The Bush.' Since then she has brought out two more collections of verse: Woman to Man and The Gateway. The growth of her reputation has kept pace with her output of...