A review by jeeleongkoh
Selected Poems Of Anna Akhmatova by Richard McKane, Anna Akhmatova

3.0

I decided to bring Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems with me to France. I wanted to like them more than I actually did. The translator, Walter Arndt, took care to render the poems in matching meter and rhyme. The resulting poems in English feel rather dainty and dated, not the qualities that are usually associated with Akhmatova. I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay while reading the translations. More unusual, more original, in translation, are her long poems. Requiem, translated by Robin Kemball, is very moving in its depiction of her grief at her son's imprisonment by the Soviet authorities. "A Poem without a Hero" is powerfully phastasmagoric. Of the lyrics, I like best "The river dawdles, valley waters gathering" for its vivid detail, "The cathedral doors are flung wide open" for the specificity of its locale, and the wonderful "Lot's Wife," who "laid down her life for a single glance back."