Argo 19, edited by David Harcourt and Max Kerr, published by VUW Students' Association. 20c.

In their editorial note the editors of Argot 19, David Harcourt and Max Kerr, declare that "with the aid of a grant from the Students' Association the format of the magazine has been improved considerably". This is untrue: apart from the illustrations the format of this Argot is as mediocre and unimaginative as it has always been—an electric typewriter, such as has been used in the past, was just one of the small mercies we had to go without.

The most accomplished poem in the issue was undoubtedly Gordon Challis's "The Black King"; in twenty-five plain and well-wrought lines of unobtrusive rhyme he conveys the majesty and mystery of the black ore. Considerably further down the aesthetic scale is the group comprising Dennis List, Sam Hunt, Jim Horgan, John de Courcy and Rhys Pasley. List's poems are largely nonsense but nave a certain satisfyingness and completion nevertheless One feels that he has proved, elegantly, an obscure theorem in a logic, or language known only to himself. Hunt's "Black Toadstools" was well written but the introspective, mildly psychotic theme does not seem his forte—not if you've heard him read his love poems. Horgan's images are vivid ("Ezra Pound inhales a urinous (sic) hundred years . . . And his mad kisses bite through to the bone.") but hardly informative. His "Wine Song" though, gets across well that swooning nausea which all wine takers-to-excess must know.

"Sleeping Mountain", by de Courcy, is a competent description, if not evocation, of a vague foreboding—symbolic of something perhaps, we are given no clue as to what it might be. The two poems by Pasley are good, in an unassuming, gently way, but what does "our bodies clapping" refer to? Does it not clash with the more explicit, but hardly more pleasant "I pitch upon your ocean flesh"?

Michael Neill's distinction between ponds and pools in "Ponds" escapes one, but his other poem, expressing the desire that ". . . astonishing contortions/Disturb my wife's welsh-flannelly/Unperfumed sleep is amusing. The long poem by Jenny Anderson I could not like or understand at all-Frederick C. Parmee's "Song for Christmas" seems to have been plagiarised directly from the group shouting scene in the musical Hair.

The best prose piece in the issue is Alan Roddick's slightly pretentious criticism of the three poems from Argot 18. Though one or two are wide of the mark his comments are generally true and interesting. He's right about how very good Sam Hunt's "Song about Her" is. The rest of the prose was badly written. Brian Dawkins sets himself a very small task—a rapid comedian from his title "Contemporary Writing: O Canada!"—but accomplishes, in poor, self-conscious prose, even less. Hows this for literary criticism: "All this is pretty negativistic on my part, so to inject a more positive tone, I will state categorically that the real Canadian novelist of today is in fact Hugh McLennan."

I have never listened to the music of the pop group called The Doors, nor was I in Miami when their lead singer Jim Morrison regaled his audience by "lewdly and lasciviously exposing his penis" but if his "deeply disturbing lyrics" are anything to go by ("Angels fight/Angels cry/Angels dance/and Angels die") then I must say I regret missing neither experience. Darien Frost asks "who cares how Jim Morrison behaves when he can give us lines like these: (those quoted)." We must ask "who cares about Jim Morrison at all?" The nonsenee-prose piece by Allen Marett seems to be a hoax, a successful attempt to 'have' th editors, and deserves no comment.

The five drawings in Argot 19 and the cover, by Jenny Anderson and Jenny Murray, were very decorative and good.