The spirit of national identity in each of the Baltic States has often found expression in poetry, as in the work of Estonia's Lydia Koidula, Latvia's Janis Rainis and Lithuania's Tomas Venclova. In a region where poetry has carried great cultural and political currency, the literary imagination has been sadly diminished by the death in mid August of Vizma Belsevica, who inherited the mantle of Aspazija, the pre-eminent Latvian poetess of the early part of the last century.