Acknowledgments . . ix 
Introduction: Acknowledged Legislation . . 1

1 Courting Disaster: Blok and Yeats . . 45
2 Whitman, Mayakovsky, and the Body Politic . . 83 
3 The Death of the Book a la russe: The Acmeists under Stalin . . 109 
4 Akhmatova and the Forms of Responsibility: The Poem without a Hero . . 120 
5 Avant-garde Again, or the Posthumous Polish Adventures of Vladimir Mayakovsky . . 149 
6 Bringing Up the Rear: The Histories of Wisfawa Szymborska . . 173 
7 Counterrevolution in Poetic Language: Poland's Generation of '68 . . 197 
8 The Unacknowledged Legislator's Dream: Czesław Miłosz and Anglo-American Poetry . . 234 

Afterword: Martyrs, Survivors, and Success Stories, or the Postcommunist Prophet . . 266 
Notes . . 277 
Credits . . 317 
Index . . 319