Identity

That suave soul John Mason Brown last spring was heard to say "at least half of Harvard's undergraduates will admit reluctantly that they write poems." Identity, whose editor James Manchester Robinson is not a Fifth Avenue preacher as you might expect but is, rather, a vigorous undergraduate about the Square, promises give light to Harvard's reluctant poets in their dark corners or wherever they are.

But they haven't come out of hiding with the first issue, as Mr. Robinson freely concedes. His poets in Number One are generally his friends from the Cape. Mr. Robinson says Harvard poets likely will get the nod next time, and it will be a good thing, no matter how reluctant they are, because the poetry he prints in his first affair is not entirely up to scratch.

Mr. Robinson's idea of a small magazine for Harvard poets has merit, and he will deserve credit for bringing them out when he does so. "There won't be any of that philosophical stuff," Mr. Robinson said yesterday.

"There is a need for a small magazine where Freshmen and other unknowns can get published along with established poets, such as Arthur Freeman. Audience went big and some people didn't like that. Identity will be a good, nice magazine. Nothing dirty."

Identity's name apparently has to do with knowing "one's identity with each of life's facets," according to an editorial by Mr. Robinson. But he indicated in an interview yesterday that he didn't plan to have a bug about such philosophical matters as did, for instance, the editors of i.e., The Cambridge Review. I read the editorial on identity backwards and forwards and in the bathtub, and could find no real clue to the riddle of identity. Mr. Robinson comes out on the side of simplicity, I think, and that is praiseworthy. "...Simplicity," he says, "may be an intentional affirmation that the core of life is not a complex of enigmas but an aggregation of simple truths."

Nor does Mr. Robinson's single contribution of poetry in the magazine lend itself to utter enlightenment. His poem, modestly spread across the center-fold of his 16-page publication, is graphically in the form of a giant phallic symbol, rising, one gathers, from the base of mediocrity and human rubbish. Mr. Robinson displays an amazing knowledge of six, seven, and eight-letter words, including poniard (spelled poignard, with which Webster is unfamiliar, on the preceding page by Harry Kemp, described as "a former friend of Eugene O'Neill") and cautery, the household word of course for what happens when you pick up a hot frying pan.

Harry Kemp, whose work is familiar to anyone who has bought a calendar in any of the fascinating gift shops of Provincetown, asks his readers "I wonder if it's worth the game/To be thus affable and tame?" and gives us two more poems as well. And other poets, too interesting to mention, are also there. The only good bit is an amusing lazy poem called "Summer" written by Dorothy Pollock-Watson and fun to read.

The community will thank Mr. Robinson for eventually devoting his energy to a small and modest magazine for our reluctant poetry-makers, the sooner the better. Perhaps an impatient fellow, he probably just couldn't wait. But we can.