Interpreting Rosemary Dobson's Poems

Within the human psyche, there is a constant need to relate. We relate our own personal stories to that of others, we relate stories we have read to our own personal stories, and we relate stories that we have read to other stories. This intrinsic desire to relate and belong can also be translated to a literary degree. The constant relation of texts to others, more commonly known as intertextuality, is both within a text and within the mind of those reading and writing it. Rosemary Dobson, an Australian born poet, is an example of a human, one who has a need to relate one thing to another and find patterns within, but also someone who has the artistic capacity to translate this need into words; a poet. Dobson’s consistent allusion to other texts such as the bible, and allusions to historical and personal events, gives her poetry simply the
The subject of how this intertextuality and the connections stems back to the concept of relevance and apophenia. The human psyche is not time specific, and therefore is always relevant. As such, the connections made within a poem to other works will continuously be made, or perhaps new connections will be made as the time goes by. Such connections will only lose their relevance and by default their meaning, when the intertextuality between the source used to create such connections, is destroyed. In the instance of the reference of Lazarus in the bible to the poem ‘Wonder’ by Rosemary Dobson, the intertextual reference of the historical and important figure will continue to be made until such time as the Bible is no longer read intertextually with the poem. This constant intertextual reference allows the poem to resonate across time and continue to be relevant decades after the poem was written, and centuries after the Bible was