Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė is mostly known as a prose writer and author of the autobiographical novels Aštuoni lapai (Eight Leaves) (1956) and Devyni lapai (Nine Leaves) (1982), although she debuted in literature with a collection of poems Metūgės (Young Shoots) (1952). Young Shoots featured a model of free, complicated and openly eroticised femininity original in its style and subject matter. Pūkelevičiūtė proposed a unique vision of the female world and introduced into the Lithuanian literature the dimension of life as an eternal scene with changing characters and dramatic acts filled with exotic and fantastic images and open erotic experiences, all very unusual for the Lithuanian poetic tradition. Some of the themes in Pūkelevičiūtė’s poetry (for example, the theme of awakening femininity) echo the poetry of Salomėja Nėris. The modernist tendency of her work is manifest in the inner struggles of the speaker, their contradictory inner world. The protagonist of Pūkelevičiūtė’s poetry expresses the experience and way of thinking of the modern woman and man of the 20th century.
Another prominent theme in Pūkelevičiūtė’s poetry is her relationship with nature: a peculiar perception of sin and the need to break free from the grip of traditional morality. The “I” of the poem is an active character, not a mere appendage of the male ego. The poet brings out “the body language” proposed by Cixous and Irigaray. Lust expressed freely points to the body because the body is the source of being through which fulfilment is achieved.