Katha Pollitt

2012-02-06T18:27:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation blogs about the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood:

"The Komen Foundation Pinkwashes Anti-choicers, Punks Planned Parenthood"

"Komen's Ambiguous Apology"

New Nation Column: "Obama Stands Up to Bishops. Finally."

2012-02-06T18:17:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column online.

New Nation Column: "Ron Paul, Take Two"

2012-01-25T13:03:00.001-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column online.

New Nation Column: "Ron Paul's Strange Bedfellows"

2012-01-10T14:33:00.002-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column online.

Regarding Christopher

2011-12-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's complicated and touching tribute to the late Christopher Hitchens, online at her Nation blog.

Occupy the Holidays!

2011-12-20T12:17:00.000-05:00

Mulled wine, fruitcake, carols and latkes are all very well. (Wait, latkes? I'll take some of those!) But the best holiday tradition is helping others through our annual end-of-year donations list. Whip out your checkbook and read on.

New Nation Blog: "Let's Treat ALL Women Like Children"

2011-12-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's new blog about Plan B online, at The Nation.

New Nation Column: "Bishops vs. Women: Which Side Is Obama On?"

2011-12-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

Read the new column here, at The Nation's website.

Two New Subject to Debate Columns

2011-11-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

Check out two new Nation columns:

Rick Perry, God and Me: When I Got the Call, and Penn State's Patriarchal Pastimes.

New Nation Column: "We Are All Occupiers Now: The Mainstreaming of OWS"

2011-10-26T11:03:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column online, at The Nation.

New Nation Column: "Ban Birth Control? They Wouldn't Dare..."

2011-10-13T13:57:00.004-04:00

Katha's new column is up now at The Nation. Read it online.

Feminist Conversations: Katha Pollitt

2011-10-03T09:52:00.002-04:00

Sarah Erdreich recently interviewed Katha Pollitt for the website Feminists for Choice. Read Katha's thoughts on feminism today online.

New Nation Column: "Whispers of Jackie O"

2011-09-27T08:44:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's new column about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis online, at The Nation's website.

New Nation Column: "The Poor: Still Here, Still Poor"

2011-09-13T18:35:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's new column online.

New Nation Column: "Michele Bachmann, Wife in Chief?"

2011-09-13T18:30:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's new Nation column online.

New Nation Column: "Birth Control: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"

2011-07-30T15:16:00.000-04:00

Check out Katha's newest Nation column, about the history of birth control and its current "controversy."

An excerpt from the article, which can be read online:

"It’s hard to imagine anyone opposing broader access to contraception. But it’s lucky that the HHS can accept these recommendations without Congressional approval, because this is America, where anything involving sex and/or women drives some people crazy. How crazy? Two weeks before the recommendations came out, Leonard Blair, the Catholic bishop of Toledo, Ohio, urged Catholic schools and parishes to cease raising money for Susan Komen for The Cure, the country’s largest breast cancer charity, because someday it might fund embryonic stem-cell research. Better actual women should die of breast cancer today than that an embryo be theoretically imperiled in the vague and misty future."

New Nation Blog: "No, Erica Jong, Sex Is Not Passe"

2011-07-22T12:08:00.000-04:00

Check out Pollitt's most recent blog post on The Nation.

New Nation Column: "Talk the Talk, Walk the SlutWalk"

2011-07-01T14:41:00.001-04:00

Check out Katha's newest Nation column about SlutWalk, young feminists' take-it-to-the-streets protest of victim-blaming for sexual violence.

New Nation Column: "A Conversation With Saudi Women's Rights Campaigner Wajeha al-Huwaider"

2011-06-13T09:31:00.000-04:00

Katha had a conversation with Saudi women's rights and human rights campaigner Wajeha al-Huwaider. Read it online at The Nation.

"DSK Déjà Vu"

2011-06-01T05:18:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's article on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged rape attempt and his enablement by the French elite.

New Nation Column: "Dear France, We're So Over"

2011-06-01T04:52:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column about the French reaction to DSK's attempted rape of his hotel maid.

Vacation From War Calling for Donations

2011-05-16T08:26:00.000-04:00

Vacation From War is again calling for donations to fund summer camp sessions where low-income Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian children can learn about one another in peace while having fun. This year VFW will continue its groundbreaking sessions in which young Israelis and Palestinians meet and discuss, well, everything. $150 makes you a camper’s “godparent.” Mail checks made out to “Vacation From War” to Katha Pollitt, c/o The Nation, 33 Irving Place, 8th floor, New York, NY 10003.

New Nation Column: "Women Who Ran With the Republicans"

2011-05-16T08:23:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column online.

New Nation Column: "The Bitter Tea of Greg Mortenson"

2011-05-02T10:52:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's column on the scandal surrounding Greg Mortenson and what it means for the education of young girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Click here to read it online.

New Nation Column: "After Budget Showdown, Women Under the Bus"

2011-05-02T10:40:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column online at The Nation.

Katha Pollitt on the Brian Lehrer Show

2011-05-02T10:34:00.000-04:00

Listen to Katha talk poetry and politics on the Brian Lehrer show. Click here.

Get Ready, World! Katha Pollitt Joins Twitter!

2011-04-13T16:42:00.002-04:00

Katha finally took the plunge and joined Twitter. Follow her here: http://twitter.com/KathaPollitt

Nation Blog: "The Budget Stalemate Is Not About Abortion"

2011-04-13T16:40:00.000-04:00

Planned Parenthood gets no federal money for abortion, a procedure which constitutes some 3 percent of their work. None! (Neither, by the way, does the United Nations Population Fund, which Republicans also want to defund. In fact, it has been banned from funding abortions since its founding in the 1970s, and by several bouts of US legislation since.)...How can the fight be about abortion, when no federal monies are spent on abortions at Planned Parenthood? The fight is about Planned Parenthood. Period.

Read Pollitt's entire blog post online.

New Nation Column: "Women Under the Budget Knife"

2011-04-13T16:34:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from Pollitt's Nation column this week:

Remember “shared sacrifice”? Like the rain, the budget cuts were supposed to fall on all alike. But somehow men seem to be ending up with more than their share of umbrellas, and women are getting soaked. Attacks on reproductive healthcare are openly aimed at women and have gotten a lot of attention—like the House vote to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate the Title X family planning program, which has fortunately been blocked in the Senate. Less visible are the ways federal, state and local government cutbacks, touted as neutral and necessary belt-tightening, will fall disproportionately on women.

Read the whole piece online at The Nation's website.

Support Katha in the National Network of Abortion Funds Virtual Bowlathon

2011-04-13T16:25:00.001-04:00

A message from Katha:

Dear friends, I just want to let you know that I'm participating in the National Network of Abortion Funds Virtual Bowlathon. That means, instead of bowling to raise $$$ for low-income women's abortion care, I sit here at my computer and try to raise more money than the other writers sitting at their computers. Last year I came in second. This year I want to do even better!

Can you help? No amount is too small! What with the Republican assault on reproductive rights and even Planned Parenthood, donating to NNAF is a great way for you to show your support for abortion rights and access.

To donate, just go to my fundraising page.

NNAF is a terrific organization, by the way. It's the umbrella for the many local abortion funds around the country. Your donation to NNAF will support the organization and also help women pay for abortion care in areas that no local fund covers.

Thanks for reading, Katha

Nation Blog: "This Just In: Women Are Not All Pacifists"

2011-03-28T11:44:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest blog entry online, at The Nation.

Pollitt in Slate: "The Lack of Female Bylines in Magazines is Old News"

2011-03-16T13:28:00.000-04:00

Pollitt recently wrote for Slate online about the lack of women magazine writers. One of her suggestions? To get more women writers, get more women editors. Read the piece at Slate.

New Nation Blog: "Mayor to Judge: Drop Dead"

2011-03-16T13:19:00.000-04:00

Check out Pollitt's Nation blog post about NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg singling out Judge Emily Jane Goodman.

New Nation Column: "In Its Crusade Against Choice, Has the GOP Gone Too Far?"

2011-03-16T13:06:00.001-04:00

An excerpt from Pollitt's latest column:

"...You know what the Bible says about pride. Puffed up with their triumph in the 2010 elections—and worried about keeping their ever more reactionary base on board—Republicans at the state and federal level are letting their misogyny, their fundamentalism and their sheer nuttiness show. When Congress gets rid of federal funds for birth control for low-income women and antichoice activist Janet Porter gets two fetuses to “testify” at a hearing on the Ohio “Heartbeat Bill” by projecting their ultrasound images on a screen in living color, a shark has been seriously jumped. What’s next—a vial of talking sperm? (Porter is not some marginal loony by the way; she was a co-chair of Mike Huckabee’s Faith and Family Values coalition during his 2008 campaign.)

Read the full article online.

New Nation Column: "It Takes a Village, Not a Tiger"

2011-03-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's column about childhood education and the effects of poverty online at The Nation.

New Nation Column: "Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Horror Show"

2011-01-31T11:10:00.002-05:00

"Blood-spattered floors. Cat feces. Broken equipment. A 15-year-old giving anesthesia. Two women dead, countless more maimed and injured. Third-trimester fetuses delivered alive whose spines were then severed by the doctor. This was the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. This is what illegal abortion looks like...Only women who felt they had no better alternative would have accepted such dangerous, degrading and frightening treatment."

Read Pollitt's Nation column on Kermit Gosnell's atrocious Pennsylvania facilities and the misguided crackdown on abortion rights it has inspired.

Pollitt Talks about Obama's State of the Union Address at The Guardian UK

2011-01-31T10:48:00.004-05:00

Pollitt reflects on last week's state of the union address at The Guardian. "Uplifting, a bit dull – but haunted by what was left out..." Read it online at The Guardian.

Katha Pollitt with Gloria Feldt, Rebecca Traister, and Nita Lowey at 92Y

2011-01-31T10:40:00.002-05:00

Pollitt recently sat on the panel, "Women, Power, and Politics," at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. She talked about how women recognize sexism -- especially in regards to how a woman's attractiveness is always rated, even when it is completely irrelevant -- but wondered whether we reinforce standards of beauty and sexualization by constantly discussing and drawing attention to the unfairness. Check out a clip here:

Naomi Wolf: Wrong Again on Rape

2011-01-17T10:53:00.000-05:00

Naomi Wolf wants rape complainants' names to be revealed when they press charges. In her Nation blog, Pollitt argues that lifting anonymity in rape trials is a terrible idea.

Read the blog online at The Nation's website.

New Nation Column: "Jared Loughner's Glock: Weapon of Mass Destruction"

2011-01-17T10:42:00.001-05:00

In the aftermath of last week's Arizona shooting which left six dead and thirteen injured, there has been endless speculating about Jared Loughner's mental state and his motivation for the massacre. The Tea Party, the districts marked in crosshairs, the openly hostile and hate-filled political environment have all been indicted as enormous contributing factors. Something that cannot be dismissed, however, is the fact that the shooter, a troubled, possibly mentally ill young man, had access to a Glock 19, a gun that allowed him to shoot 33 people without reloading.

An excerpt from Pollitt's latest Nation column:

"...whatever Loughner's demons turn out to be, what let him kill six people and wound fourteen was that he had access to a gun—and a magazine that let him shoot thirty-three bullets without reloading. (Indeed, the Glock 19 was the same model gun Seung-Hui Cho used to kill thirty-two people at Virginia Tech.) It's a little pathetic—has it really come to this, that it will be a huge uphill battle to ban something that has no purpose except to kill up to thirty-three people before anyone can stop you?"

Read the entire column online here.

Pollitt Interviewed About Feminism's Future

2011-01-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

Katha Pollitt talks intergenerational feminist debates and why she's holding out for the younger generation. Read her interview with Joanna Chiu -- "Young Feminists 'Rankling The Old Guard' and the Future of Feminism" -- on The Nation online.

New Nation Column: "The Case of Julian Assange"

2010-12-27T10:34:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column here.

Pollitt on Shirley Sherrod in The Guardian

2010-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's article on her hero of the year, Shirley Sherrod, in The Guardian online.

New Nation Column: "Spread the Joy"

2010-12-13T11:09:00.000-05:00

Want to give a real gift this December? Check out Pollitt's annual list of 10 great organizations in need of donations. From The Nation online.

Pollitt Talks Condoms, Tea Party On Grit TV

2010-12-06T12:14:00.002-05:00

Check out Katha Pollitt's interview with Laura Flanders on Grit TV. She talks about the Pope's changed stance on condoms, as well as the new flock of anti-choice Republicans about to join Congress. Watch the video on Grit TV's website; Katha is interviewed at the 14:23 mark.

New Nation Column: "On Condoms, Hope From the Pope"

2010-12-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column online, at the Nation's website.

Pollitt Reviews "Cleopatra: A Life" By Stacy Schiff

2010-11-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

Read Katha Pollitt's review of Stacy Shchiff's new Cleopatra biography -- "Cleopatra With Brains," in Slate Magazine online.

New Nation Column: "Antichoicers on the March"

2010-11-14T13:04:00.002-05:00

This January, 53 additional antichoice Republicans will be taking their seats in the House and 5 more will be joining the Senate. Should we be worried about reproductive rights? Think of it this way: "...Only one of the new Republican senators thinks man-made global warming is real. So by the time they've taken control of your womb, you'll probably be dead."

Read the full column online at The Nation.

New Nation Column: "Postcards from Capetown"

2010-11-01T20:20:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column about her trip to South Africa, "Postcards from Capetown, on The Nation's website.

On Hill And The Thomases: How Far Have We Come?

2010-10-25T10:06:00.000-04:00

Pollitt writes about current attitude toward sexual harassment. Read it online at NPR's website.

New Nation Column: "Feminist Mothers, Flapper Daughters?"

2010-10-04T10:17:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column on intergenerational feminism, "Feminist Mothers, Flapper Daughters?"

New Nation Column: "Franzenfreude, Continued"

2010-09-19T06:42:00.001-04:00

Check out Pollitt's most recent column, "Franzenfreude, Continued," an excellent assessment of how male and female writers' works receive different -- and gender specific -- praise.

New Nation Column: "It's Better Over There"

2010-09-08T11:22:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from Pollitt's newest column:

My first day back in New York after a year in Berlin, I got on the subway and found my end of the car dominated by an obscenity-shouting black man with a crutch and a suitcase spilling garbage. When he tried to leave the train at Penn Station, he fell and cursed so loudly at two young men who tried to help him up that they backed off. Not once in my time in Berlin did I see anything remotely like this scene. Berlin is a poor city by German standards, with homeless people and beggars and presumably mentally ill people as well. But it doesn't have the kind of destitution we take for granted in the United States, especially for African-Americans. The strong German safety net keeps people from plunging into the abyss.

Pollitt Wins "Lifetime Achievement" American Book Award!

2010-08-30T08:56:00.002-04:00

Congratulaions to Katha Pollitt, who has been awarded the American Book Award's "Lifetime Achievement" prize!

From The Nation website:

The Nation's Katha Pollitt has been awarded the thirty-first annual American Book Award's prestigious "Lifetime Achievement" prize, celebrating her contributions both as an essayist and a poet. This is Pollitt's first American Book Award; she will be honored on September 19 at the awards ceremony in San Francisco. Pollitt is the author of several collections of essays; her most recent books include Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories(2007) and her second collection of poetry, The Mind-Body Problem (2009). Other ABA winners this year include Amiri Baraka, Dave Eggers and Pamela Ushuk.

Pollitt has written for The Nation since 1980, and her regular column, "Subject to Debate" has run since 1995. You can read more about the awards here. The ceremony is open to the public.

Pollitt Blogs @ The Nation

2010-08-18T09:13:00.002-04:00

In addition to the biweekly "Subject to Debate" column, Pollitt blogs regularly for The Nation. Read her posts online at thenation.com.

Recent posts include:

Switzerland's Polanski Protection Program

Nicole Hollander is a National Treasure: Thirty Years of Sylvia

Saudi Feminist Wajeha Al-Huwaider: An Open Letter to President Obama

Rebuild and Read: Books for a Post-Katrina Middle School

The BP Oil Disaster: Bringing it All Back Home

Choice v. Freedom?

Review: Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow

2010-08-18T08:44:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's review online at Slate.

New Nation Column: "Ground Zero for Free Speech"

2010-08-13T08:08:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

New Nation Column: "Grisly Mamas"

2010-07-20T15:11:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column here.

New Nation Column: "Women On Top?"

2010-07-11T12:55:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

New Nation Column: "Abraham Lincoln, Meet Client #9"

2010-06-18T02:30:00.000-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest Nation column online.

Good news! After three years of being held by her father, Nazia Quazi is finally out of Saudi Arabia.

New Nation Column: "Veil of Fears"

2010-06-07T03:19:00.003-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

New Nation Column: "Whatever Happened to Welfare Mothers?"

2010-05-14T03:40:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

New Nation Column: "Let Us (Not) Pray"

2010-05-04T12:59:00.002-04:00

On April 15, the National Day of Prayer was ruled unconstitutional. Read Pollitt's take on the ruling online at The Nation's website.

New Nation Column: "Letter from Berlin"

2010-04-23T00:41:00.002-04:00

Pollitt talks healthcare, guns, and politics -- U.S.A. versus Germany. Read the article here.

New Nation Column: "Papal Indulgences"

2010-04-09T01:08:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

How will healthcare reform affect women's reproductive rights?

2010-03-29T02:30:00.002-04:00

Katha Pollitt interviewed sociologist Carole Joffe about the future of American women's reproductive rights and health. Read the interview here.

New Nation Column: "Payback for Prochoicers"

2010-03-20T12:09:00.002-04:00

An excerpt from Pollitt's latest column:

"If healthcare reform becomes law, you can thank prochoicers. In the end, forced to decide between sacrificing abortion coverage and voting down coverage of everything else for 30 million people, abortion-rights supporters took the hit...You can call prochoice leaders hypocritical or cowardly or feeble or excessively deferential to the president's agenda. But one thing you can't call them is selfishly obsessed with their own political purity. That would be the antichoicers--the Catholic bishops, Bart Stupak, Ben Nelson. They were the big evil babies who were willing to let millions suffer and 45,000 people die every year unless they got to deprive women of their reproductive rights."

Read the full piece here.

Nazia Quazi Update

2010-03-15T14:11:00.002-04:00

Nazia Quazi is still trapped in Saudi Arabia because of sexist laws. Quazi is a dual citizen of both India and Canada, though neither nation will support her pleas for assistance. Read about how you can help here.

Pollitt originally wrote about Nazia Quazi in January.

New Nation Column: "Global Women: Good News, Bad News"

2010-03-15T14:05:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's newest column here.

Haitian Relief: Shelter is Crucial, Underfunded

2010-02-24T10:28:00.003-05:00

As if things couldn't get any worse for Haiti, 1.2 million people are now homeless, living in crowded makeshift open-air "spontaneous settlements" without shelter beyond maybe a bedsheet. The rainy season is on its way. It's hard to imagine the misery – no protection from the elements, no sanitation--to say nothing of the risks of epidemic disease.

While the UN humanitarian response has succeeded in filling 107% of requested funds for health, a major achievement, only 27% of funds requested for shelter needs have been donated so far. Some causes may just be sexier than others – but that doesn't mean they're less essential.

Mark Leon Goldberg has the details at UNdispatch, including information on how to donate ( it's about two-thirds down the page). The rains start in May, so if you were thinking it's maybe time to make (another) donation to Haitian relief, you're right.
A tarp that can shelter a family of 5 costs only $15; a shelter kit costs around $30.

Originally published in "And Another Thing."

Exchange: Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn on the Hispanic Crime Rate

2010-02-24T10:04:00.002-05:00

Pollitt spars with fellow Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn over his citation of "groundbreaking research" about the Hispanic crime rate in America. Read about it here.

New Nation Column: "What Ever Happened to Candidate Obama?"

2010-02-24T09:55:00.001-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

Pollitt on American Patriotism in Dissent Magazine

2010-02-08T12:59:00.003-05:00

Read Katha Pollitt's thoughts about the dark side of American patriotism in the Winter 2010 issue of Dissent.

New Nation Column: "Focus on the Fetus"

2010-02-08T10:18:00.001-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

Help Haiti: Donate to a Grassroots Healthcare Organization

2010-01-25T11:27:00.003-05:00

If you've been wondering how and where to donate to Haiti relief work, have meant to give but haven't yet done so, have given already but can give more, you can't do better than give to Partners in Health. PIH, founded by Paul Farmer, has worked in Haiti for 25 years building a grassroots healthcare organization that has become a model for healthcare for the poor in the developing world. PIH knows the people and the culture and how to get things done. Indeed, right now its hospital and clinics are among the few still standing. Moreover, PIH will still be in Haiti when the crisis is over and the media spotlight has moved on.

Donate here: Stand With Haiti -- Partners In Health

New Nation Column: "Free Nazia Quazi"

2010-01-25T11:09:00.003-05:00

Nazia Quazi, a dual Canadian-Indian citizen, has been held in Saudi Arabia for two years against her will because her male guardian won't give his permission for her to leave. The Canadian Embassy in Riyadh doesn't want to become involved in what it views as a Muslim family dispute. This is the second time in the past year that Canada refused to acknowledge the basic human rights of one of its female citizens trapped in Saudi Arabia. Read more here.

New Nation Column: "The Decade for Women: Forward, Backward, Sideways?"

2010-01-13T14:19:00.002-05:00

Read Pollitt's review of how American women have fared during the previous decade here.

The Mind-Body Problem Reviewed in the New York Times' Sunday Book Review

2010-01-02T19:37:00.004-05:00

Eric McHenry reviewed Pollitt's The Mind-Body Problem in this week's Sunday Book Review for the New York Times:

“Everywhere I look I see my fate,” Pollitt writes, and she’s not kidding. Studying the ragtag riders on a New York subway at night, she thinks “of Xerxes, how he reviewed his troops / and wept to think that . . . / not one would be alive in a hundred years.” The kitschy collectibles in a schoolyard rummage sale have crossed decades to deliver the message “that we lose even what we never had.” “The Mind-Body Problem,” Pollitt’s second collection of poems (and her first in close to 30 years), is a book consumed not so much with mortality as with transience, of which mortality is one aspect. Another is the way our most casual choices come to define us, a process Pollitt likes to enact by letting casual-seeming analogies take over whole poems. “Death can’t help but look friendly / when all your friends live there,” she writes in “Old,” “while more and more / each day’s like a smoky party / where the music hurts and strangers insist that they know you.” In the poem’s final lines you’re still at that awful party, checking your watch and saying “to no one in particular, / If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go home now.” Pollitt knows how to pace a poem — where it ought to turn, tense and relax. She knows how many specifics she needs to save up in order to afford an abstraction, and how to cinch off a free-verse lyric with pentametrical certainty: “wrapped in white tissue paper, like a torch”; “the silent, bright elms burn themselves away.” A few of the poems feel pat and rhetorical (Pollitt, a longtime columnist for The Nation, is persuasive for a living). But “The Mind-Body Problem” is an affecting and satisfying book.

Pollitt Reviews J.M. Coetzee's "Summertime" in the New York Times

2010-01-02T19:13:00.003-05:00

Check out Katha Pollitt's New York Times review of J.M. Coetzee's last novel, Summertime. Presented as the author's autobiography, the book is in fact a work of fiction, written in present tense and narrated by a third-person interviewer. Read the full review here.

An excerpt:

It’s tempting to see “Summertime” as Mr. Coetzee’s attempt to answer critics’ charges of misogyny by offering a quartet of humorous, mature, strong female characters who haven’t much use for their gloomy, self-absorbed author. One can also see them as resistant muses who upstage the writer by putting themselves at the center of a story that is supposed to be, after all, about him. Readers alert to writerly games about art and reality, however, will note that even if they are modeled after actual people, Julia and the rest are literary characters, the inventions of the novelist, who imagined for them the very qualities they think he does not possess.

New Nation Column: Time to Get Out Those Checkbooks

2009-12-28T09:33:00.003-05:00

A sampling from Pollitt's newest Nation column of the excellent groups who could use your support during the New Year:

(Scan the full list here and even more ideas here)

1. Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center. Co-founded by Charon Asetoyer, who did so much to defeat South Dakota's proposed abortion ban (twice!), this project of the Native American Community Board helps women and children on or near the Yankton Sioux reservation. nativeshop.org

2. Gulf Region Advocacy Center. This Houston-based group provides free legal help to indigent capital defendants in execution-happy Texas. gracelaw.org

3. Freedom From Religion Foundation. If you have had it up to here with faith-based initiatives, creationism and clerical prying into our private lives, FFRF is the organization for you. ffrf.org

4. Bahia Street. Founded by a Brazilian sociologist and an American anthropologist, this group helps girls from the slums of Salvador, Brazil, with education, healthcare, food and counseling to help them break out of the cycle of poverty and violence. bahiastreet.org

5. WAW/AWF. More troops are not going to help Afghan women become literate or self-supporting or safe from violence. That takes local knowledge and hands-on involvement. Women for Afghan Women, on whose advisory board I serve, runs women's shelters in Kabul and other cities, plus a home for the children of women in prison. womenforafghanwomen.org.

Poem Featured on Poetry Society of America's Website

2009-12-16T11:48:00.003-05:00

Pollitt's poem "Lunaria," from The Mind-Body Problem is featured on the Poetry Society of America website.

New Nation Column: "Last Column About Sarah Palin -- Ever"

2009-11-28T10:07:00.002-05:00

Read Pollitt's latest column here.

The Mind-Body Problem Reviewed in Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century

2009-11-22T21:50:00.003-05:00

Check out this wonderful review of The Mind-Body Problem from the Rattle.com blog.

New Nation Column: "Whose Team Is It, Anyway?"

2009-11-16T07:04:00.003-05:00

The Stupak-Pitts amendment bans abortions for women enrolled in federally-subsidized health insurance. Read Pollitt's thoughts here.

New Nation Column: "Working Women: Strength in Numbers"

2009-10-31T14:22:00.003-04:00

An excerpt from Pollitt's column: "For the first time in our history, women are now 50 percent of the paid workforce...Some might be tempted to spin the magic 50 percent to suggest that feminism's job is done. First it was dead because it was a failure; now it's dead because it was such a success."

Read the whole article here.

Facebookers, Unite! Help MADRE Win the Causes Challenge

2009-10-18T12:38:00.001-04:00

The Facebook Causes application is running a contest among its member do-good organizations. Every day, the group that has the most individual donors that day wins $1000; runner up gets $500. The grand winner – most individual donors by November 6 –wins, get this, $50,000! The runner-up gets $25,000 and the five next highest gets $10,000 each. Not too shabby!

Now here's the thing: MADRE, the women's rights organization, has joined the contest to raise funds for its work protecting women's rights workers in Afghanistan, where as I'm sure you know many have been threatened with death by the Taliban. MADRE needs your help to win one of these these generous prizes. Can you help? Yes, you can! The competition is for donors, not money totals, so all you need to do is go here and donate $10. In fact, you can donate $10 once a day every day from now till November 6th. If Madre wins even one day, it will get $1000, which is a significant amount. Today, October 15, by 3pm , would be a great time to donate, because with just a few more donors MADRE would beat an anti-choice group, Make Abortion UNTHINKABLE, for second place. That's $500 for women's rights, or $500 to take them away. Which should it be?

Please check this contest out, Facebookers, and be generous. Don't delay, because each day's mini-contest ends at 3 pm.

Read all about MADRE's work at www.madre.org.

New Nation Column: "German Party Politics: Color Them Blurry"

2009-10-18T12:35:00.001-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest nation column about the September 29 German elections.

Nation Blog: "Berlin Postcard"

2009-10-13T17:10:00.002-04:00

Katha Pollitt moved to Berlin six weeks ago. Read "Berlin Postcard" for an update on her life there.

Garrison Keillor Reads Yet Another Poem!

2009-10-07T12:29:00.001-04:00

Today, he reads "Amor Fati."

Garrison Keillor Reads Another Poem from The Mind-Body Problem

2009-10-06T21:59:00.002-04:00

Listen to Garrison Keillor read "Two Cats." Last week, he read "What I Understood."

The Progressive Reviews The Mind-Body Problem: "Gorgeous and tasty as a florentine cookie dipped in chocolate"

2009-10-05T13:43:00.010-04:00

The Mind-Body Problem
Review by Matthew Rochschild
The Progressive, September 2009

You probably know Katha Pollitt from her incisive and unflinching columns in The Nation, which have helped many of us survive the last three decades of reaction. But she’s also a poet, and a wonderful one at that. She’s got a new collection out, The Mind-Body Problem, and you’ll find her in a wise and reflective, if existential and mostly cloudy, mood.

She conveys this in “What I Understood.” Even as a child, she writes, she already knew “there was no God and that I would die.” Then, through almost a Hobbesian lens, she writes:

the only thing I didn’t understand
was how in a world whose
predominant characteristics
are futility, cruelty, loneliness,
disappointment
people are saved every day
by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grass-
blade, a tablecloth.

She still doesn’t understand it, she confesses at the end.

Her weariness also shows in “Small Comfort.” Little things, like “coffee and cigarettes in a clean café” or “the laundry cool and crisp and folded away,” provide insufficient solace in a world where it is

. . too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than
suffering and inflicting suffering. We’re near
the end.

But even she can’t drop us there. “O before the end,” she allows,

let the last bus bring

lover to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope
suddenly,
miraculously, down its own street,
home.

In a few other poems, she’s not so melancholy. She offers praise to “this marriage of friends and lovers made in a dark time,” and she does take pleasure in small comforts, writing that it is “possible to believe in a bearable sort of life.” I’m relieved to hear that.

Pollitt devotes a section of her book to debunking religion, which won’t surprise readers familiar with her courageous atheism. She calls this section “After the Bible,” and has some fun with it. She starts at the beginning, with “The Expulsion,” whose opening stanza sets the feminist tone:

Adam was happy—now he had
someone to blame
for everything: shipwrecks, Troy,
the gray face in the mirror.

The tree of knowledge, however, is “forlorn,” she writes, because, for a brief and vanished moment, it was “the center of attention.” She concludes this section, naturally, with “Rapture,” where

. . . Truth
blares from every station on the dial.

The last line of the poem stands as a final rebuke:

“God, it appears, is elsewhere, even
here.”

If you’re looking to Pollitt’s book for a translation of all her politics into poetry, you’re looking in the wrong place. For instance, there’s only one explicitly anti-war poem, and it’s not exactly to the barricades:

and what good are more poems

against war

the real subject of which
so often seems to be the poet’s superior

moral sensitivities? I could

be mailing myself to the moon

or marrying a pine tree,

and yet what can we do
but offer what we have?

This is Katha Pollitt the poet, at a critical distance from Katha Pollitt the columnist. I appreciate the candor. Most of all, I admire the beauty. Lines pop out, like “the world creaks on its hinges,” or:

culture is a kind of nature
a library of oak leaves.

Then there are entire poems, crystalline in their perfection, gorgeous and tasty as a florentine cookie dipped in chocolate. “Lilacs in September” is one. “The Heron in theMarsh” another. So, too, the final poem, “Lunaria,” which ends with this stanza, describing perhaps the poet herself:

A paper lantern
Lit within
And shining in
The fallen leaves.

Here is a poet fully in control of her artistic talents, someone who has taken the time, as she puts it,

wondering how to write
so that what she writes

stays written.

Pollitt on Polanski

2009-10-03T13:20:00.003-04:00

Pollitt responds to the international film community's defense of Roman Polanski after his arrest in Switzerland this week. Read "Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends."

New Nation Column: Are You Happy?

2009-10-02T07:24:00.002-04:00

Find out what Pollitt thinks about "expert" studies on the declining state of women's happiness here.

Pollitt's Poetry Featured on The Writer's Almanac With Garrison Keillor

2009-09-28T12:32:00.002-04:00

"What I Understood," from The Mind-Body Problem, is featured on the homepage of The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Read it here.

New Nation Column: Kristof's Challenge

2009-09-18T21:15:00.003-04:00

Read Pollitt's latest Subject to Debate column, a review of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's Half the Sky.

Highbrow + Brilliant: Katha Pollitt's Elegantly Provocative Poetry

2009-09-18T21:00:00.002-04:00

New York Magazine gives Katha Pollitt the highest rating possible -- highbrow and brilliant -- for The Mind-Body Problem in this week's Approval Matrix.

"It's the mark of a good poem when you absolutely must pull it out of your bag in the middle of the street and start reading out loud to a friend."

2009-09-10T09:06:00.003-04:00

Karen Pittelman gave The Mind-Body Problem an enthusiastic review on Feministing. Check it out.

Excellent Review of The Mind-Body Problem on Powell's Books

2009-09-10T08:43:00.002-04:00

From Powells.com:

In The Mind-Body Problem, Katha Pollitt takes the ordinary events of life-her own and others'-and turns them into brilliant, poignant, and often funny poems that are full of surprises and originality. Pollitt's imagination is stirred by conflict and juxtaposition, by the contrast (but also the connection) between logic and feeling, between the real and the transcendent, between our outer and inner selves: Jane Austen slides her manuscript under her blotter, bewildered young mothers chat politely on the playground, the simple lines of a Chinese bowl in a thrift store remind the poet of the only apparent simplicities of her childhood. The title poem hilariously and ruefully depicts the friction between passion and repression (Perhaps / my body would have liked to make some of our dates, / to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl / with 'None of your business ' ). In a sequence of nine poems, Pollitt turns to the Bible for inspiration, transforming some of the oldest tales of Western civilization into subversive modern parables: What if Adam and Eve couldn't wait to leave Eden? What if God needs us more than we need him?

With these moving, vivid, and utterly distinctive poems, Katha Pollitt reminds us that poetry can be both profound and accessible, and reconfirms her standing in the first rank of modern American poets.

The Best American Poetry: Katha Pollitt

2009-09-10T08:29:00.003-04:00

Pollitt was invited to guest blog for The Best American Poetry website. Read her musings on the attributes of a poem read aloud versus one read silently on a page, and find out who she thinks about when she writes.

New Nation Column: The Female Gourmet

2009-09-09T21:24:00.002-04:00

Read Pollitt's take on the film Julie & Julia in her latest Nation column.