Composed in secret during the Stalinist Terror (Akhmatova memorized the poems and burned the paper) while her son was repeatedly arrested. Requiem documents the experience of the women who stood in prison lines for months and years waiting for news of their disappeared husbands and sons. Its combination of personal grief, historical witness, and formal control makes it the great poem of totalitarian suffering. It was one of the most dangerous things ever written.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.