Spreading the Word: Poets and the Survival of Community in America by Ross Talarico (review)

214 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue canad1enne d'etudes americaines Compounding my disappointment with this book is the very loose structure of the chapters themselves, which in most cases are crying out for a clearer line or lines of argument (along with subheadings to mark the distinctive subsections, which are often only loosely connected with each other and whose subjects are often buried under a myriad of quotations and paraphrases). Foul and Fair Play offers a wealth of evidence but relatively scant investigation of that evidence. Instead, the book is largely content to describe, harnessing quotations from a plethora of sources and following up with minimal comment. To provide an instance, one chapter ("Methodological Items: The Clue, the Trifle, and Dirt) concludes with a catalogue of incidents involving detectives as investigators of dirt and "the garbage of civilized life" (203), culminating in this statement: "Trivia and dirt are, finally, mystery and detective fiction itself, conventionally 'trash'" (204 ). Neither the incidents in the catalogue nor the dismissal of the book's own subject matter as "trash" are explored in any way. The oversight strikes me as glaring. Foul and Fair Play, then, is disappointing but useful. The book is full of unexplored possibilities and provides a wealth of direction in its bibliography, even if it fails to exploit that wealth itself. Brian Patton King's College, University ol Western Ontario Ross Talarico. Spreading the Word: Poets and the SU1vival of Community in America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Pp. xii + 154. Ross Talarico's Spreading the Word: Poetry and the Survival of Community in America is a forthright plea for the resurgence of poetry; this plea is not aimed at academia, but rather at everyday people, who Talarico claims have lost sight of "self," contingent on the loss of a connection to their creative spirits. As a writer-in-residence at several colleges and universities, Talarico became disheartened with the increasing restriction of poetry to academic spheres. In order to address this confinement, he desired to make poetry an accessible form, as well as find a place for himself, within the community, Book Reviews 215 as a writer. Thus he created inner-city recreation programs for teens that offered poetry workshops in conjunction with activities such as basketball; he also became involved with senior citizens in writing workshops and oral history workshops, in which Talarico transcribed stories and poems by people who could not write. Here, he makes the point that "poetry was never meant to be merely words on a page, n but, rather 11 a way of seeing and appreciating the world around usu (17). Talarico is explicit about his purpose in writing this book: he states that his book is "an effort, once and for all, to take poetry out of the hands of elitists and into the working vocabularies of the social arts" (xi). Talarico makes a compelling argument for lost connections within and between community and the creative spirit. Connections that are oft-lost in a world, he deems, ruled by sound bytes and catchy jingles. Spreading the Word is a commentary on the importance of the poetic process, interspersed with anecdotes about Talarico's work and life, and the creative spirits of those around him. Just like Talarico's unique voice, the structure of the book serves to connect the personal and political and gives strength to his convictions. The book contains six chapters entitled respectively: "Harmony"; "The Democracy of Language"; 11 Deliteraci'; "The Role of the Poet\ "Tennis, Poetry, and All Things Sweaty and Beautiful"; and "The Language of a New America." Each of these chapters is divided into three parts: an essay on various aspects of language, such as the written and spoken word; a section entitled "Workshop," in which Talarico chronicles techniques he used to 111sp1re the creative process in his writing workshops, and a vignette on Talarico 's writing and personal life experiences. The organization of the book 1s also explicitly addressed, as Talarico states: There is, I believe, a delicate structure in this format, one which implies strongly the conncetion between perspective, personal experience, and community enrichment, hopefully creating a sense of reverberation, experiences repeating themselves despite different environments...