Request To A Year Flashcards
(13 cards)
What is the form of A Request to a Year by Judith Wright?
The poem consists of 22 lines with no regular metre.
What is the rhyme scheme of A Request to a Year?
The first two stanzas are unrhymed, but stanzas three to five follow an ABCB rhyme scheme, and the final stanza is a rhyming couplet.
Why does the rhyme scheme become more structured as the poem progresses?
It may reflect the great-great-grandmother’s dedication to her craft, showing how art becomes refined with time and effort.
How is the structure of A Request to a Year organised?
The poem is divided into six stanzas: five quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet.
What is the effect of enjambment in the poem?
It creates pace and urgency, mirroring the speaker’s emotional intensity and the mother’s fear and helplessness.
How does the poem begin and end?
The speaker addresses the year directly at both the beginning and end, forming a circular structure.
Why does Judith Wright return to the address of ‘Year’ at the end of the poem?
To reinforce the connection between the speaker and her great-great-grandmother and show how the request has remained unresolved or ongoing.
What is the theme of art as a form of expression in the poem?
The speaker admires her great-great-grandmother’s artistic ability and sees it as something powerful, refined, and meaningful.
How is the year personified in A Request to a Year?
The speaker addresses the year as if it were a living being capable of retrieving qualities from the past.
What does the personification of the year suggest?
That time, like art, can connect the present with the past and preserve valuable traits or memories.
What is the symbolic meaning behind the ‘firmness of her hand’?
It represents both artistic skill and emotional strength or calmness — traits the speaker wishes to inherit.
What theme does the speaker’s helplessness reflect?
Motherhood and feminism — highlighting the limitations women can feel in protecting their children or changing events.
How does the poem reflect on the role of women in society?
Through the mother’s inability to intervene in her son’s fate and her admiration for her ancestor’s strength, the poem explores societal constraints on women.
