Selected Poems

This selection gathers lyrics and longer poems Akhmatova wrote from the years before the Russian Revolution through the mid-twentieth century. Early pieces are brief, conversational poems of love, jealousy, and Petersburg streets. Later work turns to war, siege, arrest, and the waiting of women outside prisons, including the cycle that records the Terror as a private and public ordeal. Recurring figures are the speaker herself, a beloved, and the city as witness. There is no single plot. The book is a cross-section of an Acmeist lyric voice that moves from intimate speech to historical lament.

Bound in black cloth with Modigliani paper cover printed with a pattern and monochrome photo. Printed endpapers.