Marina Tsvetaeva

As a young poet, Tsvetaeva met Bely, and wrote about him. She celebrated her affair with Mandelstam in a collection of poems: an intense affair with another poet, Sofia Parnok, led to notably open lesbian verse. Living in exile in Paris, she corresponded extensively with Rilke, and wrote a poem commemorating the friendship after his death. Goncharova illustrated a story of hers — they tried unsuccessfully to get it published in France. She wrote to Pasternak for twenty years (falling in love along the way) before meeting him, and admired Akhmatova’s poetry for three decades before meeting and closely befriending her.