Masa Halamova is a poet of fragile feminine lyrics capturing with simple, sincere words the stirrings of the heart: feelings of unfulfilled love, marital happiness, pain over the loss of her husband. These three levels determine the main tone of all four of Halamova's poetry collections. Of course her range is broader (there are often motifs of the beauties of nature, or - to be more precise - of her enchantment by the Tatra mountains, where she lived for thirty years, and experiences from her stay in Paris). An organic part of her lyrical nature is a social theme under the unmistakable influence of the Czech poet, Jiří Wolker, who died of tuberculosis during an attempted cure in the High Tatras and who was very popular in the twenties. In her work Maša Haľamová followed the symbolist tradition of Ivan Krasko but the frequent use of free verse brought her closer to the more modern post-symbolist tendencies in poetry. Her poems are characterised by deeply felt and conscientiously articulated emotional experiences. Haľamová's love lyrics oscillate between the two extreme poles of love: between its birth and its death. Haľamová is considered a true master of the brief poetic sketch. The tiniest tremors of a girl's soul are captured in precisely crystalline and pure shapes whose fragility is reminiscent of the work of old goldsmith masters. The poems
Red Poppy, Ballad, The Enchanted Mountain, Of May, are among the jewels of Slovak love lyrics. Haľamová reminiscences of her dead husband are characterised by balanced emotion and a power of deeply felt experience; they belong among the strongest texts in the newer Slovak poetry. Here she moved from emotionally tuned verse to transparently pure reflection and meditation on the destiny of people who pass from a life where they have given love. Haľamová died in 1995.
Read more 
