Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

12-1-2019

Publication Title

Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication

Volume

40

Issue

4

Pages

747-749

Publisher Name

Duke University Press

Publisher Location

Durham, NC

Abstract

Don Bialostosky has long been admired as a writer of dense texts aimed at theory-minded academics and addressing Bakhtin and rhetoric. With How to Play a Poem, Bialostosky plays to a different audience, positioning himself as “something of a popular entertainer,” to use T. S. Eliot’s improbable self-description in the wake of The Waste Land. Aimed not at theoreticians but average teachers of poetry, Bialostosky’s text attempts to make Bakhtin accessible for the college and high school classroom. For my own audience here, I offer a conflict-of-interest disclosure: Bialostosky directed my dissertation over twenty-five years ago, but there is little overlap in our professional lives now. As it turns out, I am happy to offer a positive review simply because this is an important and engaging book.

Comments

Author Posting © Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 2019. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Duke University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication, Volume 40, Issue 4, December 2019. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-7739169

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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