On the Shelf

Despite Wallace Stegner's recent generalization that a college literary magazine is "not good enough for the really good writer in any university," the Commencement issue of The Advocate displays an assemblage of poetry and prose that would grace the pages of any periodical between here and Pale Alto, California.

Highlighting the work of poets Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, John Hawkes, Jr., Ruth Stone, and Seymour Lawrence, are Lauriat Lane's Garrison Prize Poems. In three pieces; "Love Song After Tea," "Pastoral," and "Demobilized," Lane writes with a frugality that effectively achieves simplicity. Only in "Au Clair De Lune," the fourth of his five included poems, does Lane run into trouble with a high-flown cadenza (". . . the moon hangs pendulous/Upon the watch-chain of some night-vested god . . .") that weakens the impression of sincerity his first three works convey.

Kenneth Koch's verse, as he himself describes it, struts "on a pilgrimage of music." Exhibiting a lively manipulation of language, Koch, however, sometimes plays vaguely with ideas that fail to fit the form be constructs so well. Two poems by Seymour Lawrence, "City Nun," and "The Beggar," present an honest attempt by their author to escape the introspective not that seems to have enmeshed most young writers. Both Koch and Lawrence received honorable mention in the Garrison Prize competition.

By-lined "ABC", the authors of "Colloquy on Robert Lowell," are actually Joel Dorius, Robert E. Garis, and S. F. Johnson, three teaching fellows in English, who discuss the Pulitzer Poet with lively dialectical ease. Andrew Eklund's "Forster and the Marabar Caves" is an exceptionally clear exposition of both Forster's development and Eklund's own response. You may wish to disagree with Eklund's contention that an artist's work may be examined for a "particular point of view, without attempting to equate the examination with any literary or artistic judgment," but Eklund consistently presents his argument, concerned more with his subject than with himself.

"The Bystanders," a short story by James McGovern, is a carefully underwritten treatment of the Negro Problem. Where McGovern succeeds, Stanley Geist, in Part Two of "Lichfield, Pacific Style," fails. McGovern's simple story of injustice and violence is handled without fanfare. Geist's tedious account of Army prison conditions in the South Pacific vacillates between reportorial observation and personal history--a report done in the spirit, if not in the manner of the "New Yorker."

Considerably improved over the two earlier issues of its post-war renascence, The Advocate presents, in its makeup as well as content, a publication that augurs greater triumphs for the coming year. It has unquestionably returned to stay.