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This was the first non poetry book I'd read by Tsvetaeva, and her remarkable prose is evident to see.
These richly diverse essays provided much insight into not only her poetry and the poetic process, but also her life, and the admiration for other Russian poets. It was a quite fascinating read, and I don't think I will get to read essays on poetry as unique, as moving, or as passionately written ever again.

As a poet, Tsvetaeva wrote on male themes such as war and valor as well as on traditional female ones such as love, jealousy, and abandonment. Her voice throughout is unapologetically, and her poetic personae are the whole of female mythology, from peasant girl to the Tsar-Maiden, Joan of Arc to Phaedra. Her insistent, magnetic voice, her innovative modernist poetics were officially ignored in the Soviet Union for decades but nevertheless influenced several generations of Russian poets.

She began writing in short lyric forms, then gradually moved on to greater depth and length with complexities in epic poems, before eventually arriving at prose. The move to prose was both natural and necessary, and a stroke of genius. She found her true voice, and it's a voice that never go away.