SOURCE: Stone, Rochelle. Review of Taina: Novye stikhi, by Bella Akhmadulina. World Literature Today 58, no. 4 (autumn 1984): 624.

In the following review, Stone offers a positive assessment of Taina: Novye stikhi, giving special praise Akhmadulina's imagery and variety of themes.

A member of the “new wave” writers, Bella Akhmadulina started to publish poetry in the early sixties. Still, relatively little has been written in English, or even in Russian, about her work, despite her acknowledged status as a major contemporary Soviet poet and that country's most popular woman poet. Her verse collections, from String (1962), to Chills and Other Poems (1968), through Candle (1977) and now A Secret, present an admirably concise, insightful, sensitive, at times humorous, romantic yet pragmatic and unmistakably feminine poetry. The latter is evidenced by the consistent use of a heroine whose “lyrical I,” the persona, reveals a closeness to the author.

We find in this collection features characteristic...