Poetry Review: Akhmatova Poems is a perfect introduction to a poet too unfamiliar in the West. This Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edition, translated by D.M. Thomas, helps rectify the oversight of a writer who lost many creative years when her work was banned by the Stalin regime. Anna Akhmatova's writing reflects the course of modern Russian history. Known as a St. Petersburg poet, she lived and wrote from the time of the tsars until after the death of Stalin. She began as a leader of the Acmeists, a Russian movement that, similar to the Imagists, was devoted to simple, direct, clear and exact writing, opposed to the convolutions of the earlier Symbolists. Even her later writing is usually concise and pointed. Her work is known for its lyricism and her popular early poems told of love's sorrows: "How unbearably white/the blind on the white window." For her, love consisted of both passion and suffering, parting, leading to anger and then to loneliness and despair. "An autumn whisper between the maples/Kept urging 'die with me'." But pain could find some comfort in a confessional sort of religion, flesh balanced by spirit. "... a red maple leaf/marks the pages of the Song of Songs." A patriot in the truest sense of the word, she refused to emigrate despite her dissent from the Revolution, government disapproval (her works banned, her husband shot, her son sent to a labor camp), and the hardship of the Second World War. After publishing mostly lyrical love poetry from 1912 to 1922 she was unable to publish until 1940. She then wrote poems in solidarity with London and Paris. But the poems of this later period primarily reflected the country's pain and tragedy during the war (she was one of those besieged in Leningrad before being evacuated) in poems that were dark and despairing, but demonstrated her fervent love of country by promoting sacrifice and extolling the martyrs of the war. "We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years./In the morning we shall find out/Who has died in the night." Her earlier poems, however, led to Akhmatova being famously condemned as "a nun and a harlot" by a government official in 1946. After this attack, her work was again suppressed until 1958. "The glass doorbell rings/shrilly ... Is today really the date? ... Don't let it be me." In her final period she could examine the years and losses during the Stalinist era. Akhmatova reflected on the tragedies perpetrated by the government and Russian experience and history during her lifetime and 60-year writing career (beginning in 1907), as in her famous works Requiem, which addressed the sadness and suffering mixed with steadfast hope, but always outraged by the injustice of the Stalinist era; and A Poem Without a Hero, a historical epic of the times. There is a short but helpful "Notes" section at the end, yet for non-Russians there is so much we miss and don't understand. My one small complaint is that translating a foreign language into rhyme well seems impossible to me. Other than that, this volume has much to appreciate. There is almost too much; the palette is so broad the book requires rereading the rereading. The Everyman's Library edition is variously titled Akhmatova (on the cover), Akhmatova Poems (on the title page), and Anna Akhmatova Poems (on page 11). Whatever, it is a perfect gift and fits easily in any backpack or purse. [5★]
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