Requiem is a cycle of lyric poems. It features variations in length and meter throughout the individual poems. They are united by a single overarching theme—the Terror. The form enables her to create a series of vignettes about multiple experiences and the experiences endured by Russians collectively, and to give each aspect of these experiences sufficient attention. Akhmatova traces the complicated variations of emotions she and the other Terror victims undergo: In some lyric poems she is overwhelmed with grief and desperation, in others she is resigned or apathic, and in still others she is proudly defiant. In depicting these emotional states in separate poems, she enables the reader to process the complicated dynamics at play.

The cycle has an almost novelistic quality. The poems that make up Requiem were written over several years. Many of them are charged with an emotional immediacy born of Akhmatova writing them “in the moment” when she was experiencing trauma and pain. Others are more retrospective and reflective, such as the poems written toward the end. The multi-year nature of these poems allows Akhmatova to both record her impressions during the Terror and to assess the Terror’s long-term legacy in the Russian national psyche.