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Example essay on Judith Wright's Request To A Year

Here's an example essay on Request to a Year by Judith Wright
Essay: Explore how Wright powerfully conveys attitudes towards art in this poem.
Wright uses techniques, such as assonance, consonance, the semantic field of the body, natural imagery and tongue-in-cheek hyperbole to highlight the speaker’s ambiguous attitude towards art. In the poem, the speaker refers to her great-great-grandmother in glowing terms, but the listener may question the sincerity of the remarks.
However, by the end of the poem, the poet refers to the speaker’s ancestor as possessing an ‘artist’s isolating eye’. This seems like damning praise, as this woman with eight children is just about to sketch her second son, before he falls to a grisly death in a picturesque Alpine scene. Although the poet calls her an ‘artist’, and uses the artistic term ‘isolating’, which makes the background blurred in order to highlight the foreground and the subject being painted, the word has a double meaning. Here it could mean the ancestor is ‘isolating’ herself from the tragedy unfolding in front of her, by focussing on her art instead. Perhaps that is the true nature of the artist. The listener may question the woman’s priorities, but not everyone can be an artist and, earlier in the poem, it is apparent that she cannot dedicate enough time to sketching, given the number of children she has given birth to. Therefore, it could be argued that there is an ambiguous tone used in the description of the well-respected ancestor, if it can be accepted that a mother with eight children is unlikely to have much time to dedicate to the arts.
Nevertheless, the speaker claims that this woman was a ‘legendary devotee of the arts’. The word ‘legendary’ seems to be an example of hyperbole, as it seems unlikely that this distant relation was famous given that she is with two of her children enjoying Alpine scenery and she had little time for ‘painting pictures’. Her devotion to the arts is less in question, as the narrative poem reveals that she put her art first: accepting her second son’s imminent death, providing she could sketch. Although the speaker refer to the woman as ‘firm’, the listener may think she is as cold as the snowy environment she finds herself in. If that is the case, the admiration that the speaker may feel may not be shared by the listener, who may be shocked by the callousness of the artist. Meanwhile, a devotee often depicts someone who is more of a follower than a leader. It could even be someone who pays for art, but doesn’t necessarily produce it. Obviously, in the near-death experience that the speaker’s relation finds herself, art comes to the fore rather than the trials and tribulations of motherhood. Perhaps she is a consummate artist after all, creating art for art’s sake at a considerable potential personal cost to her family. However, the ironic tone adopted by the speaker at the start does distance the relation from the present day, which added to the fact that the ‘great-great-grandmother’ lived generations ago, makes her actions harder to judge in a modern context. All the same, the writer’s message appears to be one of admiration for this strong-willed woman of yesteryear, who was devoted to the arts and prized it more than life itself. Therefore, the attitude could be described as distant admiration of a woman who loved the arts.
One of the strange aspects of the poem though, is its lack of poetry. Perhaps many would expect a poem so concerned with art to adopt an elevated tone, but instead Wright’s words have the opposite effect. The poem is written so prosaically that even a beautiful scene in Switzerland, the hunting ground of the Romantics, only produces a matter-of-fact response. When the speaker reveals that the artistic ancestor ‘sat one day on a high rock / beside a river in Switzerland’, the only adjective describing the scene is ‘high’. The lack of description suggests little artistic appreciation of the Alps and, instead in this narrative poem, facts seem to be more important. Therefore, The attitude towards arts appears to be that the listener should put Romanticism in perspective. Art, of course, is all about perspective and context. The Romantic poets had more than just Alpine scenery to fuel their art and the great relation may not be a ‘great’ artist, but was a ‘great’ person and ancestor in her own way.
In conclusion, arguably the most effective quotation in revealing the writer’s attitude towards the arts is ‘isolating’. As well as being a technique, it is a state-of-mind and a social stance necessary for an artist to reach his or her potential. Despite the ambiguity, it appears the writer wants the listener to understand that with great art comes great personal sacrifices, as almost seen with the speaker’s great-great grandmother.
To improve your essays, here's some advice: use a thesis statement for your intro. In other words, make a comment about the poem that’s not completely obvious. For example, the poet conveys an ambiguous attitude to art in the poem, using devices such as: alliteration and hyperbole to give the poem double meanings.
A word of caution: avoid technique spotting: it doesn't get you any marks. Focus on effects and relate them to the essay question. In this case, the poem seems to be saying that art is a double-edge sword. While it's good to reflect on what is happening and create for posterity, one foot has to be in the real world. The poet seems to have mixed feeling about what is most important: living for art or life itself.

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