Waiting for the Muse: Poems of Anna Akhmatova presents new translations of the work of this great Russian poet, set in the context of her life. Akhmatova saw the source of her creativity as the appearance to her of the Muse, the embodiment of poetic inspiration. In the poems written over her lifetime, from the early love lyrics to poems of resistance during the Stalinist Terror to poems of remembrance as her life neared its end, her conception of the Muse changed with the circumstances of her life. The Muse first appeared as an unpredictable young woman, then the classical figure of Erato, then a woman who stood beside her in the prison lines, then a cruel taskmaster. Akhmatova herself became the Muse for other Russian poets. Ultimately, Akhmatova concluded that the Muse may have been the torment she had been forced to suffer.

With this edition Swallow Press presents two of Anna Akhmatova’s best-known works that represent the poet at full maturity, and that most trenchantly process the trauma she and others experienced living under Stalin’s regime. Akhmatova began the three-decade process of writing “Requiem” in 1935 after the arrests of her son, Lev Gumilev, and her third husband. The autobiographical fifteen-poem cycle primarily chronicles a mother’s wait—lining up outside Leningrad Prison every day for seventeen months—for news of her son’s fate. But from this limbo, Akhmatova expresses and elevates the collective grief for all the thousands vanished under the regime, and for those left behind to speculate about their loved ones’ fates. Similarly, Akhmatova wrote “Poem without a Hero” over a long period. It takes as its focus the transformation of Akhmatova’s beloved city of St. Petersburg—historically a seat of art and culture—into Leningrad. Taken together, these works plumb the foremost themes for which Akhmatova is known and revered. When Ohio University Press published D. M. Thomas’s translations in 1976, it was the first time they had appeared in English. Under Thomas’s stewardship, Akhmatova’s words ring clear as a bell.

Johnson explores the concept of the Beloved — the elusive, alluring force that beckons us forth to passionate engagement with the world — and shows how our sense of love is often linked to something far greater than ourselves. She explains that mistaking a human lover for the inner, eternal Beloved is the first step in any romance, yet the ability to distinguish between the two ultimately holds the key to our quest for personal freedom and fulfillment. Steeped in Western and Eastern myth and romantic imagery, The World is a Waiting Lover guides us through story and thought in order to discover passion, Eros, and our authentic selves. It is a personal story and, at the same time, an invitation to explore our individual yearnings to live with fearless authenticity as we find more passion and meaning in our work, relationships, and view of the future.

Definitive translations of Akhmatova back in bilingual format.

This is the seminannual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2013 issue, Number 16. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry." - Dana Gioia. CONTENTS: WITH THE 2013 ABLE MUSE WRITE PRIZE FOR POETRY & FICTION - Includes the winning story and poems from the contest winners and finalists. With the winner and runner-up sonnets from the 2013 Able Muse / Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-Off. EDITORIAL - Alexander Pepple. FEATURED ARTIST - Peter Svensson. FEATURED POET - Jehanne Dubrow; (Interviewed by Anna M. Evans). FICTION - Cheryl Diane Kidder, Charles Wilkinson, Blaine Vitallo, Donna Laemmlen. ESSAYS - A.E. Stallings, Peter Byrne, Philip Morre, David Mason, Chrissy Mason. BOOK REVIEWS - Rory Waterman, Jane Hammons. POETRY - Rachel Hadas, R.S. Gwynn, Catharine Savage Brosman, John Savoie, D.R. Goodman, Jeanne Wagner, Richard Wakefield, Melissa Balmain, Tara Tatum, Anna M. Evans, Matthew Buckley Smith, Stephen Harvey, Elise Hempel, Marly Youmans, Amanda Luecking Frost, Rachael Briggs, Chris Childers, James Matthew Wilson, Alex Greenberg, Catullus, Sappho, Theocritus.

Akhmatova was recognised as one of the world's great poets after her death in 1966. Refusing to leave Russia when her work was censored and her name attacked she spoke to and for the soul of her people. There are 800 poems and essays in this edition some of which have not been published in English before.

Russian poets have always been admired for the lyric and emotional intensity with which they forge private and public experience into verse, and this volume gathers together some of the best-loved, and most powerful and immediate poems from the greatest Russian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here is the work of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ivan Bunin, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, and Joseph Brodsky, among many others. Arranged by theme—love, mortality, art, and the enduring mystery of Mother Russia herself—and presented in the best available translations, these poems will serve as both an introduction to the mastery of Russian poetry and a wide-ranging selection to be returned to again and again.