The purpose of this essay is double—to counter Mikhail Bakhtin's contention that all poetry is necessarily monologic and therefore unethical (and, in doing so, to challenge also common assumptions about the lyric that presume a singular, personal, unified voice) and to make this claim by employing Bakhtin's own theories of dialogue in reading contemporary African American poet Robert Hayden's lyric "Night, Death, Mississippi." Hayden's powerful lyric about lynching, at once beautiful and horrifying, provides a rich site to trace some strategies of form and style—for example, the use of free indirect discourse, multiple lyric voices, and a modified call-and-response structure—that enable heteroglossic dialogism within the poem itself and also self-consciously evoke and even perform the reader's answerability to and for it, establishing the participation of the lyric in the ethical encounters of dialogue.
trained in paediatrics in Dundee, Inverness, and Newcastle before being appointed the first paediatrician in Bishop Auckland. Here he built up a unit which was renowned for its clinical care and for the quality of training. While in Newcastle he had become involved in the Thousand Families Study, taking a particular interest in respiratory disease. Douglas was a keen photographer and used his skills to complement his teaching with his interests in travel, history, and gardening. He made several teaching visits to Libya, during which he also extended his interests in ancient history, becoming an expert on the Romans. He leaves a wife, Megan, and two daughters.
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