Introduction                                                            Page 4

The temptation to moralise or allegorise the annual stripping is rejected. It

would be possible to draw moral conclusions but wisdom does not lie there.

Such an approach would rob the tree of itself, cutting into it to build a house of

thought. Even the words used to disavow this kind of moralising are suggestive

of deeper meaning. "This year's wreck of last year's love" and "wounds ripped

by the summer's claw" evoke pain and loss through the passage of time and in

the violence of life. A sharp claw ripping into the flesh of trees is an image of

considerable violence from which wisdom does not look away. The seer stands

in clear view of the public, ritual stripping and "can be quiet and not look/ for

reasons past the edge of reason." The words of the poem itself bring the reader

beyond the words and "past the edge of reason". Wisdom is in "the earlier

answer of the eyes”.

Spirituality in the poetry of Judith Wright is in a simple, direct gaze at what is

before our eyes and within reach of our other senses. It is a spirituality that is

physical, sensual and reflective. It is concerned with trees, with the earth in

which they grow, with all the creatures who surround them and with the

interconnectedness of all. It is not concerned with a life of "perfection", or

with "religious" life or mysticism divorced from or in contrast to ordinary

"dailiness".

In the poetry of Judith Wright there is a move away from abstraction

and impersonality to the expression of a vision that relates immediately

to life, private and public, in contemporary Australia.... Judith Wright

(creates) her 'universal' and 'eternal' themes and images out of the life

around her, instead of being... preoccupied with such themes and

images in themselves, in abstraction from life in a particular society at a

specific time.⁴

 ⁴ Kieman, ed. Considerations, Introduction pp.xvi-xvii.