About the book: 1997 / Gisella Lachman (1890–1969) - poetess of the “first wave” of Russian emigration. She spent her childhood and youth in Kyiv. She emigrated in 1919. She lived for some time in Berlin, Switzerland, and from 1941 - in the USA. Since 1950 she lived in Washington, worked at the Library of Congress. By her own admission, she began writing poetry only in 1943, and already the next year her first publication appeared in the New Russian Word. Subsequently, she was often published in this newspaper, as well as in the New Journal and other periodicals. She was a member of the “Circle of Russian Poets in America” together with G. Golokhvastov and others. She is the author of two collections, “Captive Words” (1952) and “Mirrors” (1965), which form the basis of this publication. As literary critics noted: “Rarely anyone another in the emigrant press was compared to Anna Akhmatova so often, and perhaps none of the Russian-American poets tried so consistently and zealously to live up to the role of continuer of the work of the great Soviet contemporary in exile as Gisella Lachman».