This November's Advocate contains much that, like the season, is mature as well as sophisticated. Mature writing shows signs of careful reflection about the subject--sophisticated writing, merely about the style. Alone, the former will be dull at first reading, the latter perhaps not dull before the second or third reading. The two traits well combined make for what the uninitiated call good writing; they are best combined here in an excerpt from a picaresque novel by Richard Robinson, and in at least two poems, "Epithalamion, 4 A.M." by Stephen Sandy, and "To Speed and Greta" by Richard Sommer.

Robinson's piece is the description by a man, of (as yet) unrevealed age and circumstances, of his childhood in Rome. The core of the episode is the tension between two parts of the child's education for and in life: the severe intellectual discipline to which his father subjects him, and the sensuousness of his environment, Rome.

A feeling of restrained emotion pervades each paragraph; the prose is unpoetical in any obvious sense--you can't scan it--but is yet extremely rich, especially in its combinations of sight and touch. Tension mounts to find release in some sensation such as the feel of soft fabric after a description of a memory exercise.

The selection printed in the Advocate has the virtue of containing ideas, both explicit, as the narrator is intelligent and articulate, and, we may infer, implicit, as Robinson can control the relationship between the reader and the narrator. Unfortunately, a defect of the "excerpt from a novel" as a literary form is here evident; the figure of the narrator can only begin to emerge. The reader finishes wanting to see more and unable to find it in print.

"Epithalamion, 4 A.M.," Sandy's poem, sings softly but firmly of the love of a bride and bridegroom, of dawn, joy, time, life, and the fear of death or the end of a moment. That's a large demand to make of any poem, but Sandy succeeds. A few metaphoric rough spots briefly mar the first three stanzas, but the last four rise evenly to a climax of considerable force, thanks to careful variations of rhythm combined with a consistent metaphor.

The full title of Richard Sommer's poem is "To Speed and Greta: A Word About Your Friend, Dead in Ambush; Algeria, November 1, 1957." It is a kind and wise, but realistic "Word." Sommer talks in verse about the memory of a dead friend and troubling inadequacies of memory. The metaphor of "masks" and "manikin" creates a speculative whole that reveals with emotion the sense of emptiness a death creates. One or two lines are too harsh for the general tone of the poem, however.

Also especially worthy of mention is Thomas Whitbread's "The Noble Reader and the Sight of Words." Actually more a prose poem than anything else, it describes the distraction which the image of words on a page can offer in an attempt to find their sense. Lightly philosophic, it is easy to read, despite the myriad images.

The rest of this issue fall short, in varying degrees, of the quality of the four pieces mentioned above. Sandy has another poem, "Vale," of "the morning after" variety. Some good metaphors lose out to bad ones and hazy grammar. "We See No Phoenix," by Jonathan Revere, is confused by inconsistent metaphor, though some bright colors and clear rhymes save it from dullness.

"Notes on the Demise of Charon" by Sandy Kaye has precise sounds and three minutely detailed images and is static. The short story by Mary Kaye, too highly stylized, provokes no emotions except near the very end.

Two further poems by Whitbread are successful within their own limitations. "Don Ottavio" is a very tight little tale treated with a light touch and and a shrug--amusing and bemused. "Notices" entertains.

A special category must be reserved for Arthur Freeman's "The Zoo of You." Freeman can play games with poetry and win them, as he does here. To the moment, he has also kept ahead of the post office authorities.