Within this frame, are two poems about love and relationships (II and III) and two poems about the relationship between poet and state (IV and V). The first anticipates success the last praises success.

The first and last poems both concern artistic careers. So it’s fair to conclude that they were selected primarily on the basis of his own situation and attitudes, not for their suitability for musical treatment. However, these six poems do relate in various ways to Shostakovich’s life and to his imminent death in 1975. These six poems were certainly not among Tsvetaeva’s best known only two of them have been included in major anthologies in English (“Where Does Such Tenderness Come From?” and “To My Poems”). “Hamlet’s Dialogue with His Conscience” (1923) “Where Does Such Tenderness Come From?” (1916) Of all the hundreds of poems she published, what were the reasons Shostakovich chose these six? What is of special interest is his choice of the six Tsvetaeva poems. Soon after, he heard Tishenko’s “Three songs on Verses of Tsvetaeva” and subsequently ordered a copy (Fay 277) His familiarity with Tsvetaeva’s work was increased in 1971 when he set to music Yevtushenko’s “Yelabuga Nail,” a poem about Tsvetaeva’s suicide. His health at this time was bad, and he already knew he had a terminal illness. Shostakovich wrote the music for Si x Verses of Marina Tsvetaeva in just one week in August 1973, when he was vacationing in Estonia. The very last of these Russian poets he worked on was Marina Tsvetaeva, whose poetry had become more accessible in the USSR since a major publication of her work in 1965. He covered some of the major Russian poets from Lermontov and Pushkin to Blok, Yevtushenko and Tsvetaeva. Throughout his life, he set many poems to music, not only Russian but also Japanese, Jewish, English, Italian, German and French.

Like most educated Russians, Shostakovich was a regular reader of poetry.

My Poems... by Marina Tsvetaeva