"Five Days Old" (1958) is a poem by Australian poet Francis Webb.
It was originally published in The Bulletin on 30 April 1958, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
According to The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature "The background to the poem, according to Webb's friend, Sister M. Francisa Fitz-Walter, was that a kindly doctor, hoping to renew Webb's interest in life and to restore his desire to write, placed a five-day old baby named Christopher John in Webb's arms."The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature edited by Wilde, Hooton and Andrews, 2nd edition, p263
Critical reception The Oxford Literary History of Australia wrote that Webb's "rich tapestry of metaphors and similes has contributed greatly to his popularity among his successors, some of whom might even have taken his mental condition as part of a true poet's inevitable alienation from modern society, or even from all society. 'Five Days Old' represents Webb in an unusually lyrical and publicly open mode."The Oxford Literary History of Australia edited by Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss, 1998, p222
Publication history
After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin magazine in 1958 it was reprinted as follows:
Australian Poetry 1958 selected by Vincent Buckley, Angus and Robertson, 1958 Socrates and Other Poems by Francis Webb, Angus and Robertson, 1961 Modern Australian Verse edited by Douglas Stewart, Angus and Robertson, 1964 New Impulses in Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall and Thomas Shapcott, University of Queensland Press, 1968 A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1968 Collected Poems by Francis Webb, Angus and Robertson, 1969 Modern Australian Poetry edited by David Campbell, Sun Books, 1970 Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 edited by Alexander Craig, Jacaranda Press, 1971 Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Rigby, 1976 Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse 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 Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry edited by Les Murray, Collins Dove, 1986 Cap and Bells : The Poetry of Francis Webb edited by Michael Joseph Griffith and James A. McGlade, Angus and Robertson, 1991 Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991 Fivefathers : Five Australian Poets of the Pre-Academic Era edited by Les Murray, Carcanet, 1994 The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996 Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998 Poems for All Occasions edited by Ron Pretty, Five Islands Press, 2002 The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009 Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011
The poem was also translated into Indonesian in 1991.
Note The poem has an epigraph: "For Christopher"
See also 1958 in Australian literature 1958 in poetry
References