WHAT IS LOVE?

By Stanwood Cobb '03.Washington: Avalon Press, 1957. $2.00.

This slender volume of poetry by Stanwood Cobb 'O3 completes a trilogy and pro- vides the latest book in an impressive series of writings by the founder of Washington's Chevy Chase Country Day School.

As the author himself explains in his preface, "When I had written What Is Man? and What Is God? I thought I had pretty well covered the subject of conscious experience. But suddenly the theme 'What Is Love?' thrust itself so vividly upon my attention as to compel the completion of this interrogatory trilogy by adding What IsLove?"

It was Mr. Cobb's desire to treat his subject in various of its myriad facets and aspects: mating or sex love, family love, social love, divine or spiritual love.

The four cantos into which his poetry is divided, each treating one of these themes, are preceded by a "Prelude" that in its selections provides a background, largely of prose excerpts, against which to project what follows as the poet devotes himself to his exposition.

The flavor, movement, and style of the poetry are best conveyed by a sample from the third canto, "Social Love":

Some like to dream of independent lives there can be no such thing.

We live amidst an intricate social frame, where we as partners bring

Our wants, our needs, our inability to lead a separate life

And in this partnership it's best to wield good-willingness, not strife.

Thus men must fall in patterns, more or less, to form humanity.

The keynote of all happiness and peace is mutuality.