Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) had a life that spanned prerevolution Russia, Bolshevism, and Stalinism. Throughout it all, she maintained a restrained, graceful, yet muscular style that could grab a reader by the throat, or the heart, at a moment's notice. Her themes include romantic yearning and frustration, the pull of the sensory, the emotional power of the mundane, and her belief that a Russian poet could only produce poetry in Russia. By reputation, both Akhmatova's poems and the poet herself are defined by tragedy and beauty in equal measure, and she is for many the quintessential...