Poet analysis: Judith Wright
Judith Wright, who was born during the First World War, lived through, and was greatly influenced by, many wars that Australia had involved herself in. During an interview in 1985, Judith Wright recounts how her childhood was overshadowed by images of war; and therefore many of her earliest memories were connected with war and its effects. The constant presence of danger forced Wright to confront her awareness that all life ends in death; which has haunted her poetry throughout her years. The fear of death and loss has been expressed in The Company of Lovers’, which was published in 1946, after Wright saw the influence of the Second World War on Australia. Judith Wright’s success in translating human existence into poetry has resulted in a rich creation of exuberant expression and sincerity. Her poetry has the ability to connect reason and emotion through various poetic techniques in such a way that knowledge and experience are represented in a powerful yet dense fashion.
One would find a great challenge in expressing deep experiences in a poem consisting of simply two octaves. However, through the employment of poetic techniques Judith Wright has captured her knowledge of life and death, and the effects of war, and successfully translated them into her poem The Company of Lovers’. This poem reflects an entire generation, worldwide, who went to war, and their lovers and family who were left behind; indicated in the opening line, We meet and part now over all the world’. Wright has employed a paradox, We meet and part’ to encourage an awareness of coinciding union and departure. This paradox serves two functions; to suggest that a brief moment between lovers may soon be disrupted, and to communicate said idea in a condensed manner, which further expresses the urgency of their meeting.
Judith Wright has been successful in compressing the metaphysical themes of love and death within two stanzas, each comprised of an octave. These two indispensable aspects of human existence are juxtaposed against each other, with each of the aspects, love and death, represented in the first and second stanza respectively. In simply eight lines, Wright is able to successfully present love as a universal, all encompassing and necessary force through the diction of the poem, shown through the lines We meet and part now over all the world’, We, who sought many things, throw all away / for his one thing’ and remembering that in the narrow grave / we shall be lonely’. However,
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