Identity

The third Identity is surprisingly pleasant. With one exception, its verse is successful in its relative simplicity, free from many of the pretensions which so often encumber undergraduate poetry. Its poems deal mainly with the brilliance of love and the relative uselessness of pedantry, a happy thought for the tag end of winter.

As usual Arthur Freeman has written the nicest things in the issue. Two little poems "Atthis" and "A Pigeon Killed on Beacon Street" move quickly with their short lines and light rhythm; and a delightful irony masks satire in one and resignation in the other. Piero Heliczer's two poems are more lyrical. In P, his lack of punctuation, paucity of long syllables, and predominance of soft consonant sounds combine to produce an attractive whispering quality.

The center spread, this time by Sandy Kaye, is less objectionable than Identity's previous double page panoramas, probably because it is printed in large, easily readable type, and doesn't have to look like a spruce tree unless you really want it to. The poetry is competent, a description of a winter scene with assorted animals, and the images are crisp and economically executed.

David Landon's three poems, all partaking of the dominant love motif, are slightly more complex. The best, "Quattrocento," is cleverly constructed and involves some striking visual imagery. "Beneath a Sky" is not as well developed as the others: its images are forced, its phrases turgid, and the adjective "fishy-stinking" is enough to make any reader stop right there.

It is a pity that the prosy piece called "Beauty" had to appear on the first page, for it is clearly the worst thing in the issue. Were it not so devilishly earnest, it could easily be mistaken for parody. It attempts one of those cosmic definitions which one rarely finds outside of undergraduate writing, and which result in embarrassing mediocrity, or worse. Editor (as the author James Robinson signs himself) uses hackneyed and inconsistent metaphor, contradicts himself twice along the way, and even denies the reader the pleasure of a well-turned phrase.

Other poetry in Identity includes work by Lowell Edmunds and Mason Harris. Both pieces are technically adequate, but somewhat pedestrian. An interesting and sober review of the recent Editor, by Aden Field, distinguished by its lavish use of such critical catch phrases as "human experience" rounds out the issue.