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Articles by Anna Akhmatova
What It’s Like to Be Medicated: Beware the Sunken Shame
Not every reader who wrote in to tell us about their medication journey mentioned shame, but a lot did. Reading these entries what’s striking is the source of that shame: almost always it’s internal. The finger pointing back at us is — surprise — our own. Which is why, forgive the sincerity, sharing is crucial. It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that other people take meds, change meds, up their dosage, titrate off, go back on, struggling every step of the way.
[Like a white stone]
Translated from the Russian by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky Like a white stone deep in a draw-well lying, As hard and clear, a memory lies in me. I cannot strive nor have I heart for striving: It is such pain and yet such ecstasy. It seems to me that someone looking closely Into my eyes would see it, patent, pale. And, seeing, would grow sadder and more thoughtful Than one who listens to a bitter tale.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Please read on for a free Hagitude giveaway, as well as the usual monthly reading recommendations and poem. Dear friends, The loss of our beloved old dog, Nell, brought a melancholy flavour to the beginning of autumn, but each day the rawness fades a little more and it seems possible to begin to fully feel my way into the beauties of my favourite of the four seasons.
'I'm not one of those who left their land'
I'm not one of those who left their land To the mercy of the enemy. I was deaf to their gross flattery. I won't grant them my songs. But to me the exile's always wretched, Like a convict, or a patient. Wanderer your road is dark, And the bread of strangers tastes bitter. But in the blinding smoke, the flames, Destroying the remains of youth, We have refused to evade A single blow against ourselves.
Grief Dream by Carol Muske-Dukes - Poems
Spring in Hell and everything’s blooming. I dreamt the worst was over but it wasn’t. Suppose my punishment was fields of lilies sharper than razors, cutting up fields of lies. Suppose my punishment was purity, mined and blanched. They shunned me only because I knew I was stunning. Then the white plague came, and their pleas were like a river. Summer was orgiastic healing, snails snaking around wrists. In heat, garbage festooned the sidewalks. Old men leered at bodies they couldn’t touch until they did.
Anna Akhmatova: a leading light of modern Russian poetry
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Why Is This Age Worse...? by Anna Akhmatova
Akhmatova began writing verse at the age of 11 and at 21 became a member of the Acmeist group of poets, whose leader, Nikolay Gumilyov, she married in 1910 but divorced in 1918. The Acmeists, through their periodical Apollon rejected the esoteric vagueness and affectations of Symbolism and sought to replace them with "beautiful clarity," compactness, simplicity, and perfection of form--all qualities in which Akhmatova excelled from the outset. Read more →
written by Anna Akhmatova
Under her dark veil she wrung her hands. "Why are you so pale today?" "Because I made him drink of stinging grief Until he got drunk on it. How can I forget? He staggered out, His mouth twisted in agony. I ran down not touching the bannister And caught up with him at the gate. I cried: 'A joke! That's all it was.
This Soviet Poet Fought Against Stalin With Her Words — & She Can Teach Us About Resistance
How far would you go to speak your truth? The Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova went up against Joseph Stalin himself. She refused the secret services' pressure to turn her mystical poetry into state propaganda, and instead detailed the harsh reality of life under Stalin's regime. For Akhmatova, the cost of speaking truth to power cost her almost everything — and everyone — she held dear.
Sinead Morrissey
A quiz which tests how poetic you can be in everyday interactions.
Willow by Anna Akhmatova
...and a decrepit handful of trees. —Aleksandr Pushkin And I matured in peace born of command, in the nursery of the infant century, and the voice of man was never dear to me, but the breeze’s voice—that I could understand. The burdock and the nettle I preferred, but best of all the silver willow tree. Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams; it lived here all my life, obligingly. I have outlived it now, and with surprise.
Love Found: A Diverse Illustrated Collection of Classic Poems Celebrating Desire, Longing, and Devotion
“The alternations between love and its denial, suffering and denial of suffering … constitute the most essential and ubiquitous structural feature of the human heart,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in contemplating how we know we love somebody. How unsurprising then, and how inescapably human, that we should try to steady ourselves through these oscillations — violent, beautiful, disorienting — on the armature of language, on poetry’s precision of sentiment.
Love Found: A Diverse Illustrated Collection of Classic Poems Celebrating Desire, Longing, and Devotion
“The alternations between love and its denial, suffering and denial of suffering … constitute the most essential and ubiquitous structural feature of the human heart,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in contemplating how we know we love somebody. How unsurprising then, and how inescapably human, that we should try to steady ourselves through these oscillations — violent, beautiful, disorienting — on the armature of language, on poetry’s precision of sentiment.
Fragment, 1959 | by Stephen Berg
And entering towns the guns had missed. towns out of storybooks, we saw the constellation of the Snake but we were afraid to look at each other. The earth smelled like an orphanage—potatoes, disinfectant, shoes—I thought Time walked next to us, years, centuries. And someone shook a tambourine, someone we couldn’t see. There were noises and tiny bluish-yellow lights. What did they mean, those fireflies signaling to us in the dark? I even thought those noises were the lights. And we walked on together.
13 Highly Giftable Poetry Books That Are Balms for the Soul
This month and next we’ll be running a series of posts called Printed Matter, in which we probe New York editors and outside experts for books that make the very best gifts. I like to give poetry to people as gifts whenever I can. I feel like I am doing my part. Poetry is vital for our culture, especially now. Our country is not going to heal from this national psychotic break with another Facebook post.
Secrets of the Trade
Károly Ferenczy, The Woman Painter, 1903, oil on canvas, 53.5″ x 51″. Anna Akhmatova’s poem “Secrets of the Trade,” translated by Jo Ann Clark with Zhenya Zafrin, appeared in our Winter 1996 issue. Akhmatova died in 1966; our columnist Anthony Madrid recently wrote about an epigram of hers. 1.
You Thought I Was That Type Poem by Anna Akhmatova
You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I'd plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, Or that I'd ask the sorcerers For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: My precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul Vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working icon, And by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.
The Fountain of My Youth
On the way to a new life in la Florida we made a stop in Saint Augustine oldest city in our America A side trip to visit la Fortaleza de San Marcos the striped lighthouse cobblestoned plaza and of course Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth A teenager, I didn’t want youth I wanted the age when I would be free Go out and stay out long as the night Drive, drink, drink and drive The unearned freedom of adults Still it was intriguing … Could the waters restore, Preserve, rejuvenate?
Words Without Borders Campus
To kiss a forehead is to erase worry. I kiss your forehead. To kiss the eyes is to lift sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. To kiss the lips is to drink water. I kiss your lips. To kiss a forehead is to erase memory. I kiss your forehead. About Poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky First published in English in Words Without Borders' February 2005 issue: Love, Literally.
Lot's Wife
Find and share the perfect poems. And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed." A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
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