Description: Word Play focuses on the intertwined fates of children's literature and underground poetry throughout the Soviet period. Five case studies feature experimental poets whose unpublished work was not written for children but featured a childlike lyric speaker, diction, form, and humor.
Review Quotes: "Word Play offers a welcome addition to the field and a novel contribution to the study of childlike elements in unofficial poetry in the Soviet Union. The book adds to the understanding of Russian poetry and unofficial literature, while simultaneously contributing to Russian children's literature research, and literary studies in general. Ainsley Morse intriguingly highlights the role of elements of the childlike aesthetic in unofficial literature in the Soviet Union throughout the twentieth century and rightly challenges boundaries between literary categories defined by audience." --Sara Pankenier Weld, author or Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde (Northwestern, 2014)