The poems in this volume were composed between August 1917 and October 1918 and thus they span the most turbulent period of the 20th century in Russia, as the nascent republic was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and the country descended into civil war. This collection concentrates on the lyric poems that Tsvetaeva wrote at this time, whose importance should not be underestimated. Each offers a modest, unassuming gateway to the immense world of her imagination and her travailed, eternally questioning and endangered humanity, even those with a missing word or phrase she did not find the time to...