Mädchen ohne Kleider

Girls without clothes, clothes without people. Whether from air - even in her new, lyrical yet narrative cycles of poetry, Maria Stepanova sets out to repair life. The triggers can be chance discoveries: for example, the photo of a young unnamed woman, naked on a chaise longue, exposed to the gaze of the suitor like game in the hunter's sights. The existential impulse to remove women from the pornographic gaze and to save them by capturing their vulnerability in poetry is felt in every line. She employs all her artistry to transform the shock into lucid, unpathetic verses.

There are always girls without clothes somewhere. There is always something that gnaws at them. There is always something that remains of them. There is always something that is forever over. She will never again step onto the wooden sidewalk, holding the lemon-yellow, wilted umbrella like a sun wheel that spins, the street woman at work on the sex of others.

This is the only photo of her. It shows: round like the sun, her backside.