Customer Reviews

Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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This is an exhaustively researched biography; no stone is left unturned in the names, places, dates and events of the poet Akhmatova's life. However, Reeder doesn't seem to manage compiling the mountain of data into a flowing narrative. The effect is a bit like watching a homemade movie made with a handheld camera, constantly zooming around and giving a sudden close-up of something. Suddenly, you'll get several pages in which she heavily excerpts other works about a particular person's life, even at the expense of shining any light on Akhamatova herself. In the section she devotes to the poet Osip Mandelstam, we are suddenly told that he "had the brilliant idea of getting a cow" to survive his exile. In fact, his widow Nadezhda wrote in her superlative memoir that getting a cow was her idea and (Osip) was "not keen on my plan ... 'Nothing ever comes of such schemes,' he said." Ultimately, Reeder's biography feels a bit clinical. She does a good job at analyzing the poetry, but Akhmatova herself eludes us. (By the way, to hear Akhmatova reciting her own poetry, go to www.russianpoetry.net, then click on "Voices.")

Beautifully written bringing to life the real Anna set in the real history of that period in Russia. Both a history lesson and a poetry lesson.

Much more than the biography of a great poet, it is a looking glass into intellectual life in Russia during one of its most prolific and tragic eras. Invaluable. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

First of all,

I've read this bio

Twice thru

and still, not enough!

Akhmatova had a fascinating beauty. Painted and photographed by many.

She was a great poet who evolved during

Un imaginable tumolt . She witnessed this & uncannily endured.

But what an undivided love and loyalty

left over riding

for this place called Russia.

What a strange continent this must be..

What a place of paradoxs, Russia must be.

This rich bio lends all of that.

One of my FAVORITE biographies, ever!

i