SOURCE: Feinstein, Elaine. “Introduction.” In Three Russian Poets, pp. 9-16. Manchester, England: Carcanet New Press Limited, 1979.

In the following essay, Feinstein briefly compares Akhmadulina's poetry to that of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva.

Bella Akhmadulina was born in Moscow in 1937, with Italian and Tartar ancestors. Her striking beauty and her warm, affectionate presence hide an almost febrile intensity. In Pavel Antokosky's Introduction to her 1975 collection he speaks of Akhmadulina's ‘strong masculine talent … I don't mean in the craftsmanship, or technique … but where it really matters, at the root; in the moral tension of a human being who is growing, even as we look. She is a poet, not a poetess.’ Many voices would join him in that; and it is, I believe, no accident that it is Bella Akhmadulina who has most boldly taken upon herself the inheritance of her great women predecessors, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva...