In this paper, I trace maple imagery from Anna Axmatova's early
lyrics through her war-time poetry and finally her culminating work
This paper limns the development of Axmatova's maple motif. The impulse for poetic remembrance and transformation remains constant throughout the evolution of Axmatova's poetry; the unfolding of her mature voice, however, reveals a shift in the impulse to poetic transformation. Where her early poems evince a desire for immortality and entrance to the poetic canon, her later, immensely human, poems in addition address the possibility that art can function as a palliative to biographical tragedy: through her craft, the poet strives toward personal redemption.