Customer Reviews

Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova

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Anna Akhmatova not only lived through some of the most exciting, dangerous, and horrific times in Russian and Soviet history, she was also blessed with an incredible lyrical gift in writing poetry. Collected here, in admirable translations and with the original Russian, are over a hundred of her finer (shorter) poems. The passion and intensity of this poet are clearly visible from the start, from her early love poems of "Tskarskoye Selo" to her later, more serious, "Requiem".

Readers who know enough Russian to read the cyrillic text will appreciate Akhmatova's musical lyricism, the alliteration and natural rhymes and cadences she is able to (so easy, seemingly!) create. The English translations naturally do not have this music, despite the very valiant attempts to recreate it by Hemschemeyer. She usually gets the cadence, rhythm and stress pretty well, but... well... it's never the same. However, since the poetry is difficult, those who have some Russian (but not perfect, like myself) will really enjoy having both languages present on opposing pages.

This is a chief complaint I have with the "Complete Poems", by the way, which have 800 poems, a lot of essays and tons of beautiful photographs, but NO RUSSIAN ORIGINALS! Argh. What is that? The translations are much less than half the worth of these poems.

One big complaint with this volume, though, is that it leaves out Akhmatova's major long poem, "Poem without a Hero". It baffles me why it wasn't included in this volume, even though it runs a bit long. They should have added it to the end. The editor's notes that a subsequent volume of "Poem without a Hero" is forthcoming on its own is small consolation...

There are short introductions (abridged from the "Complete Poems" and not terribly interesting), and some notes at the end (somewhat useful).

So, this is a great poet, and this may be one of the better editions for readers. Because of the slight complaints, it only gets four stars, but Akhmatova herself deserves all five!