White Flock

Akhmatova;s third collection, Belaya Staya (White Flock), in 1917, is a volume which includes many poems about Boris Apger, with whom she was having an affair. Poet and critic Joseph Brodsky later described her writing in this volume as personal lyricism tinged with the "note of controlled terror". She later came to be memorialised by his description of her as "the keening muse". Essayist John Bayley describes her writing at this time as "grim, spare and laconic".