Please join us on Monday, March 6 at 7p.m for a Round Table discussion devoted to Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova. March 5 is Anna Akhmatova’s Memorial Day. At our next meeting, which will consist of two parts, we will read poetry by Anna Akhmatova and present a small performance dedicated to her friendship with Joseph Brodsky. Then, we will share our thoughts and feelings. In his essay The Keening Muse (1982), Brodsky states that, Akhmatova is the kind of poet that simply “happens”; that arrives in the world with an already established diction and her own unique sensibility. Betrayed, tormented by either jealousy or guilt, the wounded heroine of Akhmatova’s poems speaks more eloquently than accuses, prays rather than screams. According to Brodsky, Akhmatova was, essentially, a poet of human ties: cherished, strained, severed. She showed these evolutions first through the prism of the individual heart, then through the prism of history, such as it was”. Round Table discussion is led by Elena Neznamova – Associate Professor, MA in Psychosocial Studies – Birkbeck University, Fulbright-Kennan Institute Research Scholar. (In Russian and English)