Anna Akhmatova (1889 1966), one of twentieth-century Russia s greatest poets, was viewed as a dangerous element by post-Revolution authorities. One of the few unrepentant poets to survive the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent Stalinist purges, she set for herself the artistic task of preserving the memory of pre-Revolutionary cultural heritage and of those who had been silenced. This book presents Nancy K. Anderson s superb translations of three of Akhmatova s most important poems: "Requiem, "a commemoration of the victims of Stalin s Terror; "The Way of All the Earth, "a work to which the poet returned repeatedly over the last quarter-century of her life and which combines Old Russian motifs with the modernist search for a lost past; and "Poem Without a Hero, "widely admired as the poet s magnum opus.Each poem is accompanied by extensive commentary. The complex and allusive "Poem Without a Hero "is" "also provided with an extensive critical commentary that draws on the poet s manuscripts and private notebooks. Anderson offers relevant facts about the poet s life and an overview of the political and cultural forces that shaped her work. The resulting volume enables English-language readers to gain a deeper level of understanding of Akhmatova s poems and how and why they were created.

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