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Poetry
A legend in her own time both for her brilliant poetry and for her resistance to oppression, Anna Akhmatova--denounced by the Soviet regime for her "eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference"--is one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century.
Before the revolution, Akhmatova was a wildly popular young poet who lived a bohemian life. She was one of the leaders of a movement of poets whose ideal was "beautiful clarity"--in her deeply personal work, themes of love and mourning are conveyed with passionate intensity and economy, her voice by turns tender and fierce. A vocal critic of Stalinism, she saw her work banned for many years and was expelled from the Writers' Union--condemned as "half nun, half harlot." Despite this censorship, her reputation continued to flourish underground, and she is still among Russia's most beloved poets.
Here are poems from all her major works--including the magnificent "Requiem" commemorating the victims of Stalin's terror--and some that have been newly translated for this edition.
Scott says: A legend in her own time both for her brilliant poetry and for her resistance to oppression, Anna Akhmatova—denounced by the Soviet regime for her “eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference”—is one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century.
Poetry has the power to help us deeply connect with others while accessing our higher selves. At its best, poetry can act as a reflective mirror and catalyst for personal growth and societal change. Charting the Lost Continent comes at a time in history when its message is more important than ever as both men and women collectively work toward female empowerment, self-acceptance, and gender equality. The author has arranged this collection in sections that reflect the universal themes and life passages of women, taking readers along on a courageous journey of navigation and discovery.
Linda Albert is an internationally published award-winning poet, essayist, and former theater director. A certified Jungian Archetypal Pattern Analyst and communication coach with a Master Certification in Neurolinguistics, Linda's poetry is influenced by her interest and academic training in those areas as well as by the changing roles of contemporary women and her personal joys, struggles, and insights. Her awards include the Olivet and Dyer-Ives Foundation Poetry Prizes and the Atlanta Review's International Merit Award for poetry.
With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one's sleeve, the poems of Ana Lui´sa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems--in Margaret Jull Costa's gorgeous English versions--seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask "What's in a name?"
"How solid is a name if answered to," Amaral answers, but "like the Rose--no, like its perfume: ungovernable. Free." There is much freedom within Amaral's poetry, room for mysteries to multiply, and yet her beautiful lines are as clear as water:
And that time of smiles Which does, incidentally,
really exist, I swear, as does the fire
And the invisible sea, which with nothing will agree
On the heels of his much-lauded debut collection, Raymond Antrobus continues his essential investigation into language, miscommunication, place, and memory in All The Names Given, while simultaneously breaking new ground in both form and content.
The collection opens with poems about the author's surname--one that shouldn't have survived into modernity--and examines the rich and fraught history carried within it. As Antrobus outlines a childhood caught between intimacy and brutality, sound and silence, and conflicting racial and cultural identities, the poem becomes a space in which the poet reckons with his own ancestry, and bears witness to the indelible violence of the legacy wrought by colonialism. The poems travel through space--shifting fluidly between England, South Africa, Jamaica, and the American South--and brilliantly move from an examination of family history into the wandering lust of adolescence and finally, vividly, into a complex array of marriage poems--matured, wiser, and more accepting of love's fragility. Throughout, All The Names Given is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, in which the art of writing captions attempts to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems as well as moments inside and outside of them.
Formally sophisticated, with a weighty perception and startling directness, All The Names Given is a timely, tender book full of humanity and remembrance from one of the most important young poets of our generation.