Amert, Susan

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AMERT, Susan

PERSONAL: Female. Education: Yale University, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 440 Smith Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and writer. Yale University, New Haven, CT, assistant professor of Russian literature, 1983–89; University of Delaware, Newark, assistant professor of Russian, 1989–.

WRITINGS:

In a Shattered Mirror: The Later Poetry of Anna Akhmatova, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1992.

SIDELIGHTS: Educator Susan Amert has studied, written about, and taught Russian language and literature since the early 1980s. Her research interests include modern Russian literature, Russian poetry, and Russian novels, and she has published articles on the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov.

In In a Shattered Mirror: The Later Poetry of Anna Akhmatova Amert analyzes versed penned by famous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who wrote much of her more famous work before the communist revolution. Amert focuses on Akhmatova's Poem without a Hero, The Sweetbriar Blooms, Requiem, and The Northern Elegies.

Critics overall found much to praise in In a Shattered Mirror. Many considered Amert's work to be thorough and detailed, yet accessible to a wide audience. "Excellent use of sources, informative footnotes, extensive bibliography, and sensitive readings of texts make this book indispensable" to anyone studying Akhmatova in particular, Russian poetry in general, or even the broader topic of women's issues, according to C. A. Rydel in a review for Choice. Other critics observed that Amert's analysis provides an understanding not only of the poet's work but also of the poet herself. "No Akhmatovan, including scholars and knowledgeable Russian admirers, can come away from this book without a better, sounder, deeper understanding of their poet," commented Russian Review contributor Sidney Monas.