A Night Attack

"A Night Attack" is a poem by Australian poet Leon Gellert.
It was originally published in The Bulletin in June 1917, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's first single-author collection and in a number of Australian poetry anthologies.

Synopsis

The poem describes the lead-up to a night attack during a war, concentrating on the intense feelings of the men waiting for their orders.

Critical reception

Dan Disney, in his chapter "War, Crisis, and Identity in Australian Poetry" in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry, emphasised Gellert's human reaction to the night attack as the poet situated "the war as peripherally close to a disembodied, synedochic collective of whispers shifting in abstract parts towards an impending fight. His poem places readers in heightened states of vigilance, and in so doing centralises anxiety as its motif."

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin it was reprinted as follows:Songs of a Campaign by Leon Gellert, 1917Poetry in Australia 1923Bards in the Wilderness : Australian Colonial Poetry to 1920 edited by Adrian Mitchell and Brian Elliott, Nelson, 1970Fighting Words : Australian War Writing edited by Carl Harrison-Ford, Lothian, 1986Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998From Gallipoli to Gaza : The Desert Poets of World War One edited by Jill Hamilton, Simon and Schuster Australia, 2003An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 edited by John Kinsella, University of Western Australia Library, 2007The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella, Penguin, 2009The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011From the Trenches : The Best Anzac Writing from World War One edited by Mark Dapin, Penguin, 2013