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Woman to Man (poem)

"Woman to Man" (1946) is a poem by Australian poet Judith Wright.

It was originally published in Meanjin Papers in Spring 1946, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.

Synopsis

"The eyeless laborer in the night", of the first line of the poem, is the unborn foetus of a pregnancy that Wright would never experience, as she had been told as a teenager that she would never have children.

Critical reception

Writing on the Red Page of The Bulletin a reviewer commented that this poem "moves into midnight...and there, in a midnight which represents the darkness where the unborn child takes shape,...and the darkness of death, and the darkness of not-being in which the unborn embryo, dead at the beginning of its life-cycle...there in that midnight at once creative and destructive, the primal midnight of the universe, life and death wrestle in the book".

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in Meanjin Papers it was reprinted as follows:

  • Australian Poetry 1947 edited by Frederick T. Macartney, Angus and Robertson, 1948
  • Voices : A Quarterly of Poetry, Spring 1948
  • Woman to Man by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1949
  • Modern Australian Poetry edited by H. M. Green, Melbourne University Press, 1952
  • A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956
  • The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by John Thompson, Kenneth Slessor and R. G. Howarth, Penguin Books, 1958
  • Five Senses: Selected Poems by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1963
  • Judith Wright : Selected Poems by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1963
  • Six Voices: Contemporary Australian Poets edited by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Angus and Robertson, 1963
  • Modern Australian Verse edited by Douglas Stewart, Angus and Robertson, 1964
  • A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1968
  • Judith Wright : Collected Poems, 1942-1970 by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1971
  • The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, Penguin Books, 1972
  • Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Rigby, 1976
  • ' edited by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Melbourne University Press, 1980
  • The Collins Book of Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall, Collins, 1981
  • ' edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984
  • The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984
  • My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985
  • Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Mark O’Connor, Oxford University Press, 1988
  • The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Ken L. Goodwin and Alan Lawson, Macmillan, 1990
  • A Human Pattern : Selected Poems by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1990
  • Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991
  • The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Vincent Buckley, Faber, 1991
  • The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry edited by John Tranter and Philip Mead, Penguin, 1991
  • Collected Poems 1942-1985 by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1994
  • The Oxford Book of Australian Women’s Verse edited by Susan Lever, 1995
  • Bridgings : Readings in Australian Women's Poetry edited by Rose Lucas and Lyn McCredden, Oxford Uuiversity Press, 1996
  • Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998
  • Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Kathrine Bell, Gary Allen, 2007
  • Grace and Other Poems by Judith Wright, Picaro Press, 2009
  • Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Nicholas Jose, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Anita Heiss, David McCooey, Peter Minter, Nicole Moore, and Elizabeth Webby, Allen and Unwin, 2009
  • The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009
  • 100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant, Hardie Grant Books, 2011
  • Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011
  • Love is Strong as Death edited by Paul Kelly, Hamish Hamilton, 2019

See also

References