Introduction. Mordovian literature of the 21st century is dominated by women's poetic creativity, the multi-aspect study of which is recognized as a productive research strategy. The purpose of the work – reveal the motives and images of the love lyrics of the Mordovian poetess Maria Eremina. Research materials and methods. The material for analysis was her poems from the collection “Time”. To achieve the goal, traditional methods of literary research (structural-semantic, method of holistic analysis of literary text), interpretive, and gender approaches were used. Research results, discussion. In the love lyrics of M. Eremina, various variations of the relationship between a woman and a man are realized, therefore love in her works appears in different forms – happy love and unhappiness love. Mutual love is perceived as an amazing, unique feeling, a force that harmonizes a person’s life. In a number of works, love is conceptualized in an ontological aspect, perceived as a gift from God, which spiritualizes a person and develops the best personal qualities. In poems about happy love, the dominant motif is the unity of lovers, devotion and fidelity, conveyed through traditional figurative and associative series, as well as original metaphorization of environmental phenomena. Contextual synonyms of unhappy love are symbolic images endowed with negative connotations: salty memories, a closed door, a fallen star, prickly hurricanes, wilted / trampled flowers and others. Conclusion. The key features of M. Eremina’s love lyrics include the original reflection of the emotional and psychological state of a woman in love / unloved / falling out of love, the rejection of external individualization of the beloved, the translation of his role, significance in a woman’s life, the heroine’s perception of a breakup as an ontologically conditioned, typical life situation, the absence of a verbally explicit motive for separation, placed in the subtextual space, the dominance of traditional figurative and metaphorical series in poems about mutual love, the abundance of the author’s figurative constructions, associatively correlated with the concept of dramatic love.