SOURCE: "The Late Poetry," in Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetics of Appropriation, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 295-323.

In the following excerpt, Makin discusses Tsvetaeva's poetic output in her later years, particularly her transition from writing lyrics to long poems or poemy.

The distinguishing features of the late Tsvetaeva are clearest of all in her lyric poetry. From 1907 to 1925 she completed over 1,000 lyrics. In her last sixteen years she is known to have written fewer than 100: an average of roughly six poems a year. There were, of course, more or less prolific years in both the first and the second halves of her career, but the first half saw the completion of seven major collections, the second the completion of fewer lyrics than are contained in Remeslo alone, a collection composed in just over twelve months. The reasons for this dramatic decline in her lyric output are far from...