Reviews

Akhmatova’s poetry is split into two periods, and you can definitely see distinct differences in subject and overall depth of feeling. I prefer her later work. Her earlier period focused on love and its anguishes, while her later work concentrated on the war and especially on her sufferings under Stalin.
She uses a lot of nature imagery in both periods, but definitely increases her use of literary and historical works and characters in the later period.
I just am not a huge poetry fan on my best day, so 3 stars.

frankensteinscreature's review against another edition

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dark inspiring mysterious fast-paced

5.0

shanviolinlove's review against another edition

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Lovely. While some of Akhmatova's poems feel a bit sentimental (i.e. many of the earlier jilted love poems), most resonate with evocative lyricism and breathtaking imagery. Akhmatova takes her time to set the stage, doing a 360 in the interiority she is describing: wind in the firs, owls in the night sky. She frames the conflict of a friend's death or a lovers' tryst with sights and sounds, grounding the reader in a tangible setting. I reread the final stanza of "On the Road" a dozen times.

I'm always impressed by poetry translation that keeps the integrity of rhyme and meter--and meaning!--across different languages. Brodsky's introduction hails Akhmatova's deliberate structures and rhyming patterns, and while I don't read Russian, I can appreciate the instincts in Coffin's translation.