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Ainsley Morse's Word Play offers a thought-provoking and detailed study on the intertwined relationship between experimental aesthetics in unofficial Soviet poetry and official Soviet children's literature. Examining the avant-garde origins of the "childlike aesthetic as it appears in literature and art of the Soviet era" (18), Morse notes that Soviet children's literature was very often written by experimental writers, "[s]craping by as children's authors," who "meanwhile wrote unpublished adult poetry that was both densely philosophical and rife with childlike elements." Morse explains that this was not an uncommon practice, as writing children's literature and translations "became established from the early Soviet period as an economic and political refuge for writers unable (or unwilling) to publish in other areas" (5). Her study examines several writers who fit this model and places them into historical context among other Soviet writers. While she notes that the central subject of her study is "marginal in relation to mainstream Soviet literature," the groundbreaking poetry she examines reveals "the subtle interrelations among Soviet institutions, aesthetics, and politics during the given period" (6).
The first half of the book provides the historical and formal contextualization necessary to understanding what Morse terms the "childlike aesthetic," as well as Soviet poetry and Soviet children's literature. The introduction, "Living Backward: The Childlike in Unofficial Poetry," and prologue, "The Dictionary as a Toy Collection: The Avant-Garde Origins of the Childlike Aesthetic," provide a definition and explanation of the childlike aesthetic, noting that its origins can be found in "well-established modernist and avant-garde interest in primitivism: children were appreciated … for their apparent ignorance … and for their apparent proximity to the mythic origins of human perception" (7). Morse argues that in Soviet-era children's poetry, the childlike aesthetic can be seen in both the formal and stylistic presentation and the language and worldview of the child (8). Emphasizing...