Request To A Year, Judith Wright: Summary, Analysis & Themes

"Request To A Year" is an unconventional poem where the speaker conveys a deep desire to resemble her great-great-grandmother. The rationale behind this wish is unique, which could lead to various interpretations of her motives. Written in free verse, Wright's poem employs several literary techniques that contribute to its overall effectiveness. Request To A Year Poem by Judith Wright If the year is meditating a suitable gift, I should like it to be the attitude of my great- great- grandmother, legendary devotee of the arts, who having eight children and little opportunity for painting pictures, sat one day on a high rock beside a river in Switzerland and from a difficult distance viewed her second son, balanced on a small ice flow, drift down the current toward a waterfall that struck rock bottom eighty feet below, while her second daughter, impeded, no doubt, by the petticoats of the day, stretched out a last-hope alpenstock (which luckily later caught him on his way…