This Weekend: Pollitt Answers Your Questions on "In Depth"

From C-SPAN2's BookTV program In Depth:

Katha Pollitt joins Book TV's In Depth for a three-hour conversation about her books. She is the author of a poetry collection, "Antarctic Traveller," and four essay collections: "Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism," "Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture," "Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time," and "Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories." E-mail or call [202-737-3220] with your questions for Ms. Pollitt during the show.

Here's the schedule of air dates so far:

Sunday, July 6, at 12:00 PM
Monday, July 7, at 12:00 AM
Saturday, July 12, at 9:00 AM

Be sure to tune in!

From the Archive: "The End of an Era at Radcliffe": Pollitt on Her Disappearing Alma Mater

In Newsweek, Pollitt reflected on the "official demise" of the great (if inherently problematic) women's college that was:

Radcliffe, the real Radcliffe--the women's college whose students lived in their own all-female quad and rode their bikes across Cambridge Common to coed classes at Harvard--hasn't really existed since 1977, when the two institutions technically merged. Since then, the exact nature of Radcliffe ("the invisible college," one waggish graduate called it) has been mysterious to undergraduates and alumnae alike. Still, the announcement last week that Radcliffe would cease to exist, except as a network of research institutions, gave me a twinge.

I never thought I'd feel that way. At the cusp of the '70s, I spent four years at Radcliffe chafing at rules and assumptions that seem outrageously hidebound and sexist today. Read on.

"Learning to Drive" Reviewed in Women's Review of Books

Since the piece isn't online, you may want to subscribe, or find the issue on the newsstand.

A Pithy Interview With Pollitt on the New York Times Book Blog

At Dwight Garner's Paper Cuts blog, Garner asks Pollitt, "What are you working on?" "How much time—if any—do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?" and "Whose books are generally shelved next to yours in bookstores? How does it feel to be sitting between them?"

See how she answered them here!

As for what she's working on, there's a sneak preview—of Pollitt's forthcoming book, a new collection of poems called The Mind-Body Problem, to be published next June by Random House.

On WNYC, Pollitt in Conversation About Hillary Clinton's Feminist "Yes, We Can!"

From WNYC's website:

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, Nation magazine columnist and Columbia law professor Patricia Williams and Katha Pollitt, Nation magazine columnist and author of Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Random House, 2007) talk about Hillary Clinton's Saturday speech and her campaign's impact on women and the feminist movement.

Listen to The Brian Lehrer Show here.

Pollitt on Race, Gender, and Policy (Oh, That!) in the Presidential Election

Pollitt takes part in a dialogue for the L.A. Times:

Today's question: How, if at all, does Hillary Clinton fit into the modern feminist movement? Did the Clinton-Obama contest really raise important questions about gender and race? All week, authors Amanda Marcotte and Katha Pollitt discuss contemporary feminism in politics, in pop culture and outside the Western world.

Here's Pollitt from the "Dust-Up"'s first day:

I can't tell you how many reporters have interviewed me for stories about "why women are divided about Clinton." How about a story explaining "why men are divided about John McCain"? In fact, gender as a factor in men's voting is one of many elephants in the political room, even as male (and female) candidates slaughter innocent wildlife, sit through endless NASCAR races and profess their love of hot dogs and beer.

Read the whole discussion.

Pollitt Reviews Charles Simic's New Book in The New York Times

Read her review of That Little Something (Harcourt, $23) here. It begins:

To open one of Charles Simic’s collections of poetry — this is, incredibly, his 19th — is to enter with renewed delight an instantly familiar neighborhood. Delight may not be the first word you’d associate with his shabby rooming houses, seedy movie theaters, empty restaurants on lonely side streets, dusty stores about to go out of business, bare trees. But if the scenery comes out of Edward Hopper, complete with the aura of loneliness and of ordinary things made strange by odd slants of light, the people who live there are nothing like Hopper’s doughy American depressives. They’re characters from Eastern European folk tales or Kafka, boiling with energy, nicely poised between the comic and the sinister and prone to metamorphosis: an opera singer keeps “a monkey dressed in baby clothes,” a woman “turned into a black cat / and I ran after you on all fours.” Even Grandmother — and Simic’s poems are full of grandmothers — “knitted / With a ball of black yarn.” The fun — and Simic’s poetry is nothing if not amusing — comes from the way he puts together the whimsical, the earthy, the banal and the transcendent. There are a lot of chickens in his poems and a lot of angels, too. Continued.

Katha Pollitt on Charlotte Allen's "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?"

Pollitt read Charlotte Allen's recent story in the Washington Post, "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" Here's her response.

Update: Pollitt's letter to the editor about female supporters of Barack Obama, Allen's suspect argument, and Linda Hirshman's Post story "For Hillary's Campaign, It's Been a Class Struggle," was published on March 4.

NY and CT Event: Katha Pollitt on the Radio, March 6

Pollitt will be interviewed on Binnie Klein's radio show on Thursday, March 6 at 10:30 a.m. on WPKN, 89.5 FM in Bridgeport, and WPKM, 88.7 FM in Montauk.

An Open Letter From American Feminists: The Updated List of Signatories, and How to Sign

On January 20, Katha Pollitt published "An Open Letter From American Feminists" on her Nation blog, "And Another Thing." There are more than 1,341 names on the list to date, and counting.

Since signatures keep coming in, both the letter and list of names have been moved here, and we're adding new signatures (in alphabetical order) and affiliations as they're emailed in. Want to add yours? Just send an email, and, in Pollitt's words:

"Be sure to include how you would like to be identified; for example, writer, professor (with department and university), activist, astronaut, parent, movie star. If you are active with a feminist/progressive or global organization or NGO, that would be a good thing to mention. I would like the list to show that all sorts of women, and men, are feminists and how many are actively working for women's human rights. And yes, men can sign!"