Books: The Old College Try

STRIKE THROUGH THE MASK! (70 pp.) —Peter Viereck—Scribner ($2.50).

To most people, says Poet Peter Viereck, modern poetry is a hopelessly obscure "snore and an allusion." Viereck (rhymes with lyric) is out to change that; he writes for the "intelligent general reader who has been scared away from poetry but who might return if addressed straightforwardly . . ."

More middlebrows than highbrows have applauded Viereck's efforts, but Terror and Decorum, his first book of more-or-less straightforward verse, won him a Pulitzer Prize last year. Strike Through the Mask!, his second, is as motley a product as Viereck's prizewinner, ranges from collegiate cacklings...