Anna Akhmatova summary

Discover the life and works of Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poet who wrote Poem Without a Hero

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Anna Akhmatova, orig. Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, (born June 23, 1889, Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died March 5, 1966, Domodedovo, near Moscow), Russian poet. She won fame with her first poetry collections (1912, 1914). Soon after the Revolution of 1917, Soviet authorities condemned her work for what they perceived as its narrow preoccupation with love and God, and in 1923, after the execution of her former husband on conspiracy charges, she entered a long period of literary silence. After World War II she was again denounced and expelled from the Writers Union. Following Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, she was slowly rehabilitated. In her later years she became the influential centre of a circle of younger Russian poets. Her longest work, Poem Without a Hero, is regarded as one of the great poems of the 20th century. Regarded today as one of the greatest of all Russian poets, she is also admired for her translations of other poets’ works and for her memoirs.

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and