Synopses & Reviews
From the selected works of such celebrated and beloved poets as W. H. Auden, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and William Shakespeare, to anthologies on Jazz and Blues and Beat Poets, to collections on the timeless themes of love and marriage, friendship and motherhood, the Everymans Library Pocket Poets set has it all. Theres something for everyone to enjoy in this 75-volume set, from
Animal Poems to
Zen Poems. Each book comes in an elegant 256-page pocket-sized hardcover edition (4 1/8" x 6 1/4"), with full-cloth covers, lovely illustrated and jewel-tone jackets, silk ribbon markers, and gold stamping. Perfect for your home library, or as a gift for any occasion.
This set includes one each of the following titles:
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry edited by Peter Washington
Animal Poems edited by John Hollander
Anna Akhmatova by Anna Akhmatova
Auden: Poems by W. H. Auden
Baudelaire: Poems by Charles Baudelaire
Beat Poets edited by Carmela Ciuraru
Blake: Poems by William Blake
Blues Poems edited by Kevin Young
Browning: Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Byron: Poems by Lord Byron, G. Gordon
Chinese Erotic Poems edited by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping
Christmas Poems edited by Peter Washington
Coleridge: Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington
Conversation Pieces by Kurt Brown
The Dance edited by Emily Fragos
Dickinson: Poems by Emily Dickinson
Doggerel edited by Carmela Ciuraru
Donne: Poems by John Donne
Eliot: Poems by T. S. Eliot
Emerson: Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Bronte: Poems by Emily Bronte
Erotic Poems edited by Peter Washington
Eugene Onegin and Other Poems by Alexander Pushkin
Fatherhood edited by Carmela Ciuraru
Friendship Poems edited by Peter Washington
Frost: Poems by Robert Frost
Garden Poems edited by John Hollander
The Great Cat edited by Emily Fragos
Haiku edited by Peter Washington
Hardy: Poems by Thomas Hardy
Herbert: Poems by George Herbert
Hopkins: Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hughes: Poems by Langston Hughes
Indian Love Poems edited by Meena Alexander
Jazz Poems edited by Kevin Young
Keats: Poems by John Keats
Kipling: Poems by Rudyard Kipling
Letters by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Love Letters edited by Peter Washington
Love Poems edited by Peter Washington
Love Songs and Sonnets edited by Peter Washington
Love Speaks Its Name by J. D. McClatchy
Lullabies and Poems for Children edited by Diana Secker Larson
Marriage Poems edited by John Hollander
Marvell: Poems by Andrew Marvell
Milton: Poems by John Milton
Motherhood edited by Carmela Ciuraru
On Wings of Song by J. D. McClatchy
Persian Poets edited by Peter Washington
Plath: Poems by Sylvia Plath
Poe: Poems by Edgar Allen Poe
Poems Bewitched and Haunted edited by John Hollander
Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Poems by Robert Burns
Poems of Mourning edited by Peter Washington
Poems of New York edited by Elizabeth Schmidt
Poems of Sleep and Dreams edited by Peter Washington
Poems of the American West edited by Robert Mezey
Poems of the Sea by J. D. McClatchy
Prayers edited by Peter Washington
Rilke: Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rimbaud: Poems by Arthur Rimbaud
The Roman Poets edited by Peter Washington
Rossetti: Poems by Christina Rossetti
Shakespeare: Poems by William Shakespeart
Shelley: Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Solitude edited by Carmela Ciuraru
Sonnets edited by John Hollander
Stevens: Poems by Wallace Stevens
Tennyson: Poems by Lord Alfred Tennyson
War Poems edited by Peter Washington
Whitman: Poems by Walt Whitman
Wordsworth: Poems by William Wordsworth
Zen Poems edited by Peter Harris
Everymans Library continues to maintain its original commitment to publishing the most significant world literature in editions that reflect a tradition of fine bookmaking. Everymans Library pursues the highest standards, utilizing modern prepress, printing, and binding technologies to produce classically designed books printed on acid-free natural-cream-colored text paper and including Smyth-sewn, signatures, full-cloth cases with two-color case stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, and European-style half-round spines.
Synopsis
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 Russias most beloved poets.
Here are poems from all her major works—including the magnificent “Requiem” commemorating the victims of Stalins terror—and some that have been newly translated for this edition.
About the Author
Anna Akhmatova
was born Anna Gorenko in 1888 and died in 1966. A popular poet of the Acmeist school, she took a pseudonym when her upper-class father objected to her "decadent" choice of career. She was married to the Acmeist poet Gumilev from 1910 until 1918, and spent time in Paris, where she posed nude for Modigliani. After the Revolution, Akhmatova remained silent for two decades. Her ex-husband was executed in 1921, their son was imprisoned for sixteen years, and her third husband died in a Siberian prison camp. She began publishing again at the outbreak of World War II, and her writings regained popularity despite being harshly denounced by the Soviet regime in 1946 and 1957 for "bourgeois decadence." Ejected from the Writers' Union in 1946, she was made its president two years before her death in 1966. Her greatest poem,
"Requiem," gives voice to the suffering of those who, like the poet, spent many years waiting outside prison walls for word of their sons, husbands, or lovers. It was not published in its entirety in Russia until 1987.
Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.
Table of Contents
From
EVENING‘The pillow hot . . .
Reading Hamlet
Evening Room
‘I have written down the words . . .
‘I share my room . . .
‘Memory of sun seeps from the heart . . .
‘The door is half open . . .
‘High in the sky . . .
Song of the Last Meeting
Love
‘He loved three things alone . . .
Imitation of Annensky
‘I came here in idleness . . .
White Night
Legend on an Unfinished Portrait
From ROSARY
‘I have come to take your place, sister . . .
‘It goes on without end . . .
‘Were all drunkards here . . .
A Ride
‘Nobody came to meet me . . .
‘So many requests . . .
The Voice of Memory
8 November 1913
‘Blue heaven, but the high . . .
‘Do you forgive me . . .
The Guest
‘I wont beg for your love . . .
‘I came to him as a guest . . .
BY THE SEASHORE
From WHITE FLOCK
‘Empty white Christmastide . . .
Loneliness
‘How can you look at the Neva . . .
‘The road is black . . .
Flight
‘I dont know if youre alive or dead . . .
‘There is a frontier-line . . .
‘Freshness of words . . .
‘Under an empty dwellings frozen roof . . .
‘The churchyards quiet . . .
‘Neither by cart nor boat . . .
‘Lying in me . . .
Statue in Tsarskoye Selo
‘O there are words . . .
From PLANTAIN
‘Fame is like smoke . . .
‘I shouldnt be dreaming . . .
‘Now farewell, capital . . .
‘I hear the orioles always grieving voice . . .
‘Now no-one will be listening to songs . . .
‘The cuckoo I asked . . .
‘Why is our century worse than any other? . . .
From ANNO DOMINI
‘Youre like a strange . . .
‘Everything is looted . . .
‘Oh, life without . . .
‘They wiped your slate . . .
Bezhetsk
‘To earthly solace . . .
‘Im not of those who left . . .
‘Blows the swan wind . . .
‘To fall ill as one should . . .
‘Behind the lake . . .
Rachel
Lots Wife
From REED
Muse
To an Artist
The Last Toast
*‘Dust smells of a sun-ray . . .
‘Some gaze into tender faces . . .
Boris Pasternak
Voronezh
*Imitation from the Armenian
Dante
Cleopatra
Willow
*In Memory of Mikhail Bulgakov
‘When a man dies . . .
*‘Not the lyre of a lover . . .
Way of All the Earth
From THE SEVENTH BOOK
In 1940
‘Some walk in a straight line . . .
*‘No matter that death . . .
Courage
‘And you, my friends . . .
*‘Thats how I am . . .
Three Autumns
‘The souls of those I love . . .
‘The fifth act of the drama . . .
‘It is your lynx eyes, Asia . . .
In Dream
‘Once more an autumn . . .
*The Glass Doorbell
‘And that heart . . .
‘So again we triumph! . . .
‘Let any, who will, still bask in the south . . .
Music
From Northern Elegies
The First
The Fifth
The Sixth
Seaside Sonnet
Fragment
Summer Garden
‘In black memory . . .
‘Could Beatrice write . . .
Death of a Poet
The Death of Sophocles
Alexander at Thebes
Native Soil
There are Four of Us
*‘If all who have begged help . . .
Last Rose
*‘Reviled and acclaimed . . .
‘This land . . .
*‘It is no wonder . . .
‘Whats war? Whats plague? . . .
In Memory of V. C. Sreznevskaya
Christmastime (24 December)
‘You will hear thunder and remember me . . .
REQUIEM
POEM WITHOUT A HERO
Notes
Translators Acknowledgments
*Poems not published in the collection but written in the same epoch.