Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature. In this essay, Kelly looks at Akhmatova's poem without connecting it to the events of her life.

It is very rare to find a discussion of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's work without a corresponding discussion of her life story. This is entirely understandable. Her life was fascinating, especially to American readers who would find its events difficult to imagine within the scope of their own experiences. Akhmatova was a poetic sensation at a young age, so popular that, while she was still in her twenties, a party game based on her poetry was played in fashionable parlors in St. Petersburg, with contestants trying to guess what would follow a line of her poetry read aloud. Then, for years that would normally have represented the apex of a literary career, her voice was silenced by the Soviet government, only...