Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction. Living Backward: The Childlike in Unofficial Poetry -- Prologue. The Dictionary as a Toy Collection: The Avant-Garde Origins of the Childlike Aesthetic -- Soviet Alphabet: Early Soviet Children's Literature and Experimental Poetics -- Detki v kletke: OBERIU as the First Unofficial Children's Poets -- Playing with Words: Late Soviet Experimental Unofficial Poetry and Children's Literature -- Vsevolod Nekrasov: We All Come from Childhood -- Leonid Aronzon: Naked Child on a Hilltop -- Igor Kholin: Buy Your Kids a Poet -- Oleg Grigoriev: Children! If You Only Knew -- Dmitri Prigov: I Am Fragile and Small -- Epilogue "We can't keep hold of big loud letters": The Childlike Aesthetic in Post-Soviet Poetry.

"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 Five case studies feature experimental poets whose unpublished work was not written for children but featured a childlike lyric speaker, diction, form, and humor"--