Anna's poetry displays the deep sorrow and despair she often found in her life. Though her marriage ended in divorce, she was deeply affected by her husband's assassination ordered by Lenin. Stalin arrested her son and put an un- official ban on her works, causing her to loose her right to moneys provided by the state, even after the ban was lifted. In order to survive, she depended on the good will of her friends the rest of her life. Her goal was to keep the Russian language alive, this in a time when the Communists were destroying all things from the Imperial past. While this caused her trouble with the Communists, she earned the respect of Russia's greatest writers of the day, to include Mandelstam and Tsvetayeva. The following are my translations from Russian.

Poetry