Why read Poems of Akhmatova?

Book cover of Poems of Akhmatova

Book description

Text: English, Russian (translation)
Original Language: Russian

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Poetry

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Why read it?

1 author picked Poems of Akhmatova as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Susan Wan Dolling

Author

Stanley Kunitz, with Max Hayward’s translation of Poems of Akhmatova from Russian, is another book that I find myself going back to over and over again.

This is a poet’s translation of a poet, and not only that, but a poet who is willing to give himself entirely to the art of translation in order to bring another poet’s voice in another language back to life, as he puts it in his Translator’s Note, “...to record what we have heard, and to try to give it back in the language that we love.”

This is why I love these translations;…

From Susan's list on translated books that capture the magic of the original, making what’s unfamiliar, foreign or ancient, accessible.