Zephyr Press, 1st Edition. Boston, MA, 1990

Initially published in 1990, when the New York Times Book Review named it one of fourteen “Best Books of the Year,” Judith Hemschemeyer’s translation, edited and with an introductory essay by Roberta Reeder, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova is the definitive edition, and has sold over 13,000 copies, making it one of the most successful poetry titles of recent years.  Encyclopedic in scope, with more than 800 poems, 100 photographs, a historical chronology, index of first lines, and bibliography. The Complete Poems will be the definitive English language collection of Akhmatova for many years to come.  The first edition contains both the Russian and English versions. In later editions only the English version appears.

 

 

Zephyr Press. Boston, 2000

A companion to The Complete Poems, this collection offers in a bilingual format some of the Russian poet’s most intense and lyrical moments, while retaining a preface by Roberta Reeder and accompanying notes for Judith Hemschemeyer’s translations. “We needn’t worry again about how to read Akhmatova in translation.”—The Observer (London) “In this restrained and accurate translation … the sense and message strike with all the weight of the original.” —New York Times Book Review.

 

 

Salva

Figueroa Press, Revised and Expanded Edition. Los Angeles, CA., 2007

Originally published in 1994, the biography was recently updated in 2007 based on many valuable books and articles published since the first edition, including the diary of her lover Nikolay Punin, works using the KGB archives, Emma Gerstein’s Memoirs that contain important insights on Mandelstam’s relationship to Akhmatova, a biography on V. Garshin, who played an important role in her life, Akhmatova’s late notebooks, and Carlo Riccio’s unpublished writings on Akhmatova’s trip to Italy at the end of her life.

 

 

St. Martin’s Press. 1st Edition. New York, 1994

One of Russia’s greatest poets, Akhmatova is still unknown to many in the West, but in her own country she is admired and adored by those who love the sound and profound significance of Russian verse. Her life began in the period before the 1917 Revolution, when as an aristocrat and artist, she enjoyed the elegance of St. Petersburg salons. She endured great hardship during the Stalin period when her poetry was no longer published and both her son and lover were sent to Siberia. However, after Stalin’s death, finally a large collection of her works were published and she received deserved recognition both in Russia and abroad, when she earned an honorary degree at Oxford. Despite the difficulties she endured, Akhmatova never expressed self-pity; instead she transformed personal pain and the tragedies of her nation into immortal lyrics.

Roberta Reeder has both edited The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova and has written one of the most important works on this poet, Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet, which is both a biography and an interpretation of her poems based on extensive research on her life, on the historical period in which she lived, and on the many fascinating cultural figures she knew who touched her life such as Osip Mandelstam, Nikolay Gumilyov, Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky. Akhmatova’s model was Alexander Pushkin, who could express so much in so few carefully chosen words. At first as a young poet she wrote moving love poems expressing the joy of a first encounter and later the pain of a broken heart. However, as the oppressive Stalinist period began to destroy the very fabric of society as well as the life of the individual, she began to write poems that she thought would never be published, but which she and her friends memorized, like those in the cycle Requiem, in which she communicates the grief of a woman watching a beloved one being taken away to be sent to prison, killed, or sent to Siberia. Originally published in 1994, the biography was recently updated in 2007 based on many valuable books and articles published since the first edition, including the diary of her lover Nikolay Punin and works using the KGB archives on Mandelstam.  In 1995 a paperback edition was published.

 

 

Indiana University Press, 1993

Propp’s essay in Russian Folk Lyrics extends beyond the formalistic analysis of folklore outlined in his classic The Morphology of the Folktale. In this study Propp considers the Russian folk lyric in the social and historical context in which it was produced. His extensive analysis serves as an introduction to a comprehensive anthology of Russian folk lyrics, which are divided into categories such as calendar rituals, wedding rituals, games, lullabies, love lyrics, work songs and revolutionary songs.  Some of the lyrics presented here were imitated by or appear in the works of Russia’s major writers, such as Pushkin and Nekrasov. Whether the songs are about love, labor, or children’s games, whether they are sad, humorous, or satiric in tone, Russian folk lyrics are rich in metaphor and symbolic meaning. The author’s introduction and editorial notes to Propp’s text and the folk lyrics provide valuable information to an audience unfamiliar with Russian peasant life, its beliefs and social customs. There is also a bibliography of Propp’s sources as well as an extensive selected bibliography of works on Russian folk lyrics and Russian folklore in general.