Recently, I was gifted a new poetry collection titled "Vanilla Poems for Girls in Their Thirties” by the Russian writer and poet Svetlana Bedunkevich. What gives birth to poetry? This question crept into my mind when I read the first few poems from the collection. All the works carry shades of both dark and light emotions experienced by the author.

The writer Svetlana Bedunkevich.

Of worldwide fame, bold and spry,

To forever be renowned,

To retire with the hair turned gray,

To walk proud and businesslike.

— Svetlana writes in the poem 'What Does a Poet Dream About, ' conveying through words her harmonious pulse, her balanced breath. The poems, beyond human contemplation of the meaning of existence, encompass a mysterious 'I' and 'non-I.' Thanks to this, a simple verse is filled with inexplicable warmth and harmony. Interestingly, the new book of poems by our contemporary is related not so much to Svetlana Bedunkevich’s creative style and literary preferences but to the personality of the poetess. Svetlana’s poems testify to the fact that events and phenomena in the life of every woman are not given just like that. The element of time allows women to learn from their own mistakes, passing on their experience and mourning broken feelings and hopes. And perhaps, right where a woman’s 'I can' ends, life transforms into poetry.

Leave your anger for later.

Work well, be strong,

Toil like a horse, be a steed,

— as Svetlana writes in her poem 'A Man — a Support, Not a Cat, ' telling about the colossal burden that falls on the shoulders of women after entering into marriage. The reality is that girls are prepared for marriage by telling them 'vanilla tales' about the charms of marriage, but in the end, the tales turn into reality.

The heavens will rejoice in our play,

We will tenderly write about paradise with our hearts,

We will play the violin and the trumpet,

And let people admire us.

— the poetess wrote very tenderly in the poem “I Will Play the Violin, and You Will Play the Trumpet.” This verse is so infused with love that even I, a person not easily swayed by emotions, walked around with a smile on my face for a long time after reading it.

"Many of the 'vanilla poems' by the poetess carry the character of poetic slogans, the content of which unfolds into larger artistic pictures. Svetlana’s universe is permeated with love, pain, experiences and self-irony.

In life, it’s important to find your way,

As time rushes by swiftly.

Don’t tolerate, not even a bit,

Don’t live your whole life like a coward!

— Here one wants to exclaim: the world is a game! Something stubbornly hiding or intentionally left unsaid, and something expressed, brought to the surface, a person invariably becomes a participant in the theater of life.

Reflecting on Svetlana Bedunkevich’s collection of poems, I recalled Akhmatova, who herself was and remains a poetic classic. She wrote: 'Could Biche, like Dante, create, / Or Laura praise the ardor of love? / I taught women to speak, / But, God, how to make them be silent! '.

However, humanity knows the semi-legendary Sappho, who wrote brilliant poems. And perhaps the fact that Sappho remains in her kind of proud loneliness: she is one of the very few acknowledged poetesses, known to humanity, hardly constitutes a constructive quantitative criterion in the question of a woman’s right to create like Dante.

Reading the poems of our contemporary Svetlana Bedunkevich, I least wanted to give unnecessary evaluations — 'good' or 'bad'. It is more interesting to identify some artistic principles of the author. As psychologists assure us, female thinking is more concrete than male thinking — and Svetlana reveals her authorial commitment to psychological nuances, to touching details. It is no coincidence that the poetry of Svetlana Bedunkevich is accompanied by shard aesthetics: a companion of minimalism. At the same time, the everyday concrete autobiographical experience of our contemporary is dissolved in the element of female experience and being, in the inexhaustibility of the female cosmos. Svetlana’s ability to elevate the private to the general testifies to her traditionalism as a lyric poet. At the same time, the poetess’s lyrics are new, modern, and free from epigonism, as the author performs in her new role, sharing her talent with the reader, constantly talking about herself as if not about herself. The special feminine lyricism is an inherent characteristic of Svetlana Bedunkevich’s poems.