Katha Pollitt

A poet, essayist and columnist argues that abortion is a common part of a woman's reproductive life and shouldn't be vilified, but accepted as a moral right that can be a force for social good.

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

and other life stories

Learning to drive

The columnist for "The Nation" presents a selection of eighty essays that offer a definitive critique of modern feminism, call on readers to put their principles into action, and explore the role of leadership among contemporary women.

Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture

Subject to Debate

and other social and political issues of our time

Virginity or death!

Pro Odzyskajmy prawo do aborcji

Subject to Debate, Katha Pollitt's column in The Nation, has offered readers clear-eyed yet provocative observations on women, politics, and culture for more than seven years. Bringing together eighty-eight of her most astute essays on hot-button topics like abortion, affirmative action, and school vouchers, this selection displays the full range of her indefatigable wit and brilliance. Her stirring new Introduction offers a seasoned critique of feminism at the millennium and is a clarion call for renewed activism against social injustice.

Through a series of essays, the author reexamines her life in the wake of a devastating personal betrayal, discussing such topics as her ex-lover's Internet presence, conflict over flying the flag after 9/11, her driving teacher, and heartbreak.

And Other Life Stories

Learning to Drive

The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Antarctic Traveller presents a new volume of poetic works that include pieces inspired by the Bible and evoke such subjects as the joys and pain of parenthood, the private side of a literary life, and the complexities of love and marriage.

Poems

The Mind-body Problem

The controversial Nation columnist presents a new compilation of essays addressing some of the most important and provocative issues of the time, from creationism and the Terri Schiavo right to die case to sexual orientation, human rights, and equality. Original. 20,000 first printing.

And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time

Virginity Or Death!

Jennifer Baumgardner

A collection of original essays that calls for new voices to redefine feminism.

Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century

Catching a Wave

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this brilliant, insightful, controversial, and courageous book contains the best of Pollitt's pieces, which have galvanized readers of The Nation, The New Yorker and The New York Times, on subjects that range from abortion and breast implants to date-rape, marriage, the media, and violence.

Essays on Women and Feminism

Reasonable Creatures

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.

Katha Pollitt

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