Related Resources • Our library of 20th century poets

Elsewhere on the Web • Anna Akhmatova poems at AAP • Jill Dybka’s Akhmatova page • Video of her poem “The Sentence” at the Favorite Poem Project

From her first readings at Mayakovsky’s Stray Dog cafe to the end of her life when Joseph Brodsky would later call her “the muse of keening,” Anna Akhmatova was in the center of history. She linked the pre-Revolutionary and post-Stalin eras of Russian history. Despite terrible persecution and censorship by the State, her poetry gave voice to the Russian people during times of great upheaval in Russian society. She did so with verse that is original and strikingly modern. Akhmatova outlived her persecutors, and her life has become a symbol of truth and integrity.

Here’s an untitled poem, translated by the poet Jane Kenyon:

Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust--of a ray of sun,
a girl’s mouth--of a violet,
and gold--has no perfume.
Watery--the mignonette,
and like an apple--love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.

Anna “Saint Voice” Akhmatova, the walking history of Russian history, antihistory... the woman whose voice cuts specific and sideblades gender. Sexy, political, and pure, she was one of the tribe of eight poets in our first Survivor Poet game here at About Poetry. She was voted off the island by our readers in the first round of the game.

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