A review by shanviolinlove
Poems of Akhmatova by Anna Akhmatova

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.