Who is Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (23 June [O.S. 11 June] 1889 – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was one of the most significant Russian poets of 20th century. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year.

Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 193...
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Anna Akhmatova Poems

  • In Memory Of M. B.
    Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
    not sticks of burning incense.
    You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
    your magnificent disdain. ...
  • As A White Stone
    As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
    There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
    I am not able and don't want to miss this:
    It is my torture and my utter gladness. ...
  • Along The Hard Crust...
    Along the hard crust of deep snows,
    To the secret, white house of yours,
    So gentle and quiet -- we both
    Are walking, in silence half-lost. ...
  • And Pushkin's Exile Had
    And Pushkin's exile had begun right here,
    And Lermontov's expulsion had been "canceled."
    There is the easy grasses' scent on highland.
    And only once it chanced to me to see it -- ...
  • For Osip Mandelstam
    And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
    Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
    Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
    the painted sleighs and I, together, pass. ...
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Top 10 most used topics by Anna Akhmatova

Love 17 I Love You 17 Voice 14 Night 14 Light 14 Fire 12 Heart 12 Never 12 Life 12 Bright 12


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Comments about Anna Akhmatova

Some_dumb_ho: and her swift legs rooted to the ground. who will grieve for this woman? does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? yet in my heart i never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. --anna akhmatova
Tenshi_anna: i find it really weird & ironic that the russian "writers of the feminine" that cixous obsesses over were effectively aristocratic reactionaries (thinking of akhmatova & particularly tsvetaeva, who was a virulent tsarist).
Belle_joyeux: that entire tweet screams "writing seminar hack." the embodiment of some minor local poet in provincial ryazan critiquing anna akhmatova...
Librarybookbot: ‘you and i / are like grief and the mountain, / we will not meet / in this world. / but sometimes / will you send across the stars / a sign?’ — anna akhmatova, in a dream
Johnste40163279: we aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked. - anna akhmatova
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Poem of the day

Edgar Albert Guest Poem
The Killing Place
 by Edgar Albert Guest

We're hiking along at a two-forty pace
We 're making life seem like a man-killing race,
With our nerves all on edge and our jaws firmly set
We go rushing along; with our brows lined with sweat
And our cheeks pale and drawn every minute we dash,
And the goal that we 're after is merely more cash.

We 're out for the money, the greenbacks and gold,
...

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