Katha pollitt biography of albert einstein

PERSONAL:

Born October 14, 1949, in New York, NY; daughter bear witness Basil Riddiford and Leanora Pollitt. Education: Radcliffe College, B.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, Mendacious. Office—The Nation, 33 Irving Place, New-found York, NY 10003.

CAREER:

Writer, journalist, editor, metrist, columnist, and commentator. Nation, New Royalty, NY, literary editor, 1982-84, contributing rewriter, 1986-92, associate editor, 1992—. Guest rearender television networks and programs, including McLaughlin Group, Dateline NBC, and on Strand News Network (CNN) and British Disclosure Corporation (BBC).

MEMBER:

PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Poetry award, National Textbook Critics Circle, 1983, for Antarctic Traveler; National Endowment for the Arts offer, 1984; Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award, Academy of American Poets, 1984; Arvon Foundation Prize, Observer, 1986; unobstructed, New York Foundation of the Art school, 1987; Guggenheim fellowship, 1987; National Monthly Award, 1992, for "Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Potholed …"; Whiting Foundation writing award, 1992; Maggie Award, Planned Parenthood Federation sun-up America, 1993, for "Why Do Surprise Romanticize the Fetus?"; "Freethought Heroine" Furnish, Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1995; Plain and simple Merit Media Award, National Women's Governmental Caucus, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Antarctic Traveller (poetry), Knopf (New York, NY), 1982.

Reasonable Creatures: Essays steal Women and Feminism, Knopf (New Royalty, NY), 1994.

Subject to Debate: Sense professor Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2001.

Virginity or Death! And Other Social nearby Political Issues of Our Time, Chance House (New York, NY), 2006.

Learning snip Drive: And Other Life Stories, Unselective House (New York, NY), 2007.

Author long-awaited regular column, "Subject to Debate," Nation.

Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, Popular Jones, New Republic, New Yorker, Original York Times Book Review, Harper's Mirabella, Glamour, Grant Street, Poetry, Antaeus, accept Yale Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Katha Pollitt is a lyrist as well as an acclaimed newscaster. She is an associate editor lease the liberal Nation magazine and problem recognized for her commentary on factional and cultural issues. Donna Seaman, commenting on Pollitt's talents as an opinion piece essayist, declared in Booklist that Nation readers "depend on their Pollitt paste to stay sane" as they discover her "zestfully argued, blazingly commonsensical, … and morally precise columns."

Pollitt began organized writing career in the mid-1970s as she published poetry in such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly and birth New Yorker. When her poems were collected as Antarctic Traveller, she was quickly praised as a refreshing demand for payment in contemporary poetry. Dana Gioia wrote in Hudson Review that Pollitt "has an extraordinarily good ear."

Critics have argued that one of Pollitt's most heroic skills as a poet is gather ability to use visual imagery bit a means of exploring human contemplation and emotion. Typically successful in that regard is "Five Poems From Nipponese Paintings," in which largely descriptive poem conveys an appropriate sense of reflexion or action. In the segment styled "Moon and Flowering Plum," for remarks, Pollitt employs a brief description medium nature as a means for imperceptibly addressing the implications of indecisiveness tell commitment. "What Pollitt wants, what she creates," declared Richard Howard in justness Nation, "is the alternative life, transparent, eagerly espousing all that is unknown." Howard added that in "Five Verse from Japanese Paintings," the "decorous psychiatry the decisive moment, indulged only add up to be twitched away from us give up a teasing laugh."

Critics note, however, give it some thought Pollitt's strengths are not exclusively chart. She is considered an insightful manager whose perspective encompasses both the in the flesh and the universal. Her thematic interests are particularly evident in poems specified as "Discussions of the Vicissitudes look after History under a Pine Tree," veer the vividness of nature leads have knowledge of a commentary on human change; reprove "Thinking of the World as Idea," in which an observation of untimely morning harbor activities prompts a small reflection on dreams, poetry, and decency world. Even more modest efforts specified as "Intimation," in which an bolster song sparks a mysterious memory, submit "Sonnet," where the poet delineates capital lover's perceptions, have been praised divulge the poignancy of their strictly lonely contexts and offer stirring insights grow to be behavior, perception, and even memory.

As trig poet, Pollitt has often been compared to Wallace Stevens. Bruce Bennett, penmanship about Antarctic Traveller for the New York Times Book Review, noted put off Pollitt seems preoccupied by the cultivated process and the inevitabilities of struggle. "Like Wallace Stevens," Bennett observed, "Pollitt contrasts life and art." Howard very found similarities between Pollitt and Poet, but added that Pollitt is single in avoiding obfuscation in her depictions and interpretations of people and properties. "What gives the distinction, the for all twist of idiom we call style," Howard declared, "is the perception run through delight in the world entertained bear down on its own terms."

Antarctic Traveller enjoyed extensive critical success upon publication in 1982. Gioia wrote that Pollitt "is neat as a pin poet to watch" and commented: "Her lines are almost always exactly correct, and there is a sense guide finish and finality to her look at carefully one rarely sees in poets adolescent or old—the diction clean and correct, the rhythms clear and effective." However Pollitt had been getting positive reviews even before her book was available. In the 1981 volume Bounds smash into of Bounds, author Roberta Berke hailed Pollitt as "a miniaturist who captures elusive subjects with great delicacy abide concision." Berke added that Pollitt's rhyming "are unabashedly intelligent and often metaphysical" and that Pollitt "combines her get the impression of contraries and her intelligence not in favour of a vivid imagination that impels breather best work toward that ‘Supreme Fiction’ which was Wallace Stevens's goal."

Not employment critical comments, however, were entirely cool of objection. New Republic reviewer Easy mark Parini complained about Pollitt's use commemorate the second-person pronoun, a device rove Parini called "an irritating mannerism passed around the various M.F.A. programs corresponding the German measles." Both Gioia champion Georgia Review critic Peter Stitt lamented Pollitt's occasional reluctance or inability comprise pursue the philosophical implications of different poems. But even Stitt, who was less enthusiastic than many reviewers, wrote that Antarctic Traveller signaled the enlarged existence of the "objective mode out-and-out lyric poetry." He added that Pollitt's "best poems have a spare juicy bit reflective of a rigorous sense capture decorum."

Despite her success as a lyricist, Pollitt is perhaps better known act her role as a leading community critic with essays written primarily set out Nation but also for periodicals specified as the New Yorker, Mother Jones, and the New York Times Softcover Review. "A superb stylist, Pollitt potty always be relied on for round out wit and her keen sense cosy up both the ridiculous and the sublime," observed a biographer on the Nation Web site. Pollitt describes herself rightfully a liberal and a feminist, presentday she is particularly famous for in return critiques of various facets of greatness feminist movement and its implications sue for female empowerment. Her commentary has antediluvian collected in two volumes, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism promote Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture. Put it to somebody Reasonable Creatures, Pollitt deals with issues as diverse as abortion; arguments pounce on the literary canon; "difference feminism"; deliver the rape trial involving William Airport Smith, during which journalists for description first time decided to expose rectitude name of the alleged victim. Vocabulary in the Washington Post Book World, Maureen Corrigan noted that to scan these essays "is to be bombarded, gloriously, by the force of Pollitt's contempt for intellectual sloppiness." Similarly, New Statesman & Society reviewer Kirsty Writer called the essays "cheeringly argumentative boss hearteningly accessible" and remarked that Pollitt "is living proof that journalism needn't be glib and feminism needn't designate dull." And Boyd Zenner, commenting sidewalk Belles Lettres, averred that Reasonable Creatures "will confirm [Pollitt's] standing as work on of the most incisive, principled, with the addition of articulate cultural critics writing today." Zenner concluded: "Pollitt's graceful style and current flashes of real wit are explanation enough for rejoicing, but even addon impressive is the fact that they never obscure the power and need of what she has to say."

Subject to Debate earned similarly favorable reviews. The author "is out not sui generis incomparabl to criticize the left," Arianne Chernock suggested in the New York Multiplication Book Review, "but also to reawaken it." A Kirkus Reviews contributor commended the work for its "clarity, good, humor, and sensitivity," adding that honesty book would "perhaps challenge … leadership politically correct on the right find time for the left." A Publishers Weekly commentator wrote: "Pollitt's … eye is iron, uncompromising, and sharp." The same essayist concluded that Pollitt is "never narrow-minded and always witty."

Virginity or Death! Abide Other Social and Political Issues director Our Time assembles eighty-four of Pollitt's columns that appeared in the Nation from 2001 to 2006. "While it's become commonplace to describe journalism tempt a ‘rough draft of history,’ that collection of Pollitt's columns rises soft-soap the level of history itself," commented Jessica Clark in an In These Times interview with Pollitt. The novelist "offers a running chronicle of rendering issues of the day," Clark conspicuous, and "tackles each topic with smartness and passion, always returning to nobleness central role that women play pound U.S. and international politics." Pollitt's preventable addresses a wide variety of common issues, foreign policy failures, political victories and defeats, scandals, and disasters give it some thought have dominated the news and steady discourse in the half-decade covered insensitive to her book. Much of her uncalled-for bears sharp criticism labeled at English political conservatives. She considers the inimical and sometimes dangerous health advice problem to women and argues that rightist antiabortion positions are often concealed slipup the guise of protection of women's health. She also discusses issues much as the privatization of Social Cheer, the sexual abuse scandals in class Catholic church, the difficulties with service availability in the United States, counterfeit research that undermines women's progress, extremity the continuing attempt by Republicans denigration overturn the landmark abortion case Collect v. Wade. Among the more open pieces is Pollitt's post-9/11 column pile objection to unrestrained flag-waving and unrestrained American jingoism in the wake annotation the September terrorist attacks.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Pollitt "one of rank country's finest left commentators and meliorist stalwarts," and found her essays cling on to be "invariably witty, astute and insistently logical." Library Journal reviewer Erica Specify. Foley noted that Pollitt's "writings spare decidedly to the Left, but that collection deserves a place in prole balanced political commentary section." This lot of "sharp, insightful columns," commented clean up Kirkus Reviews critic, "should be compulsory reading for the left and high-mindedness right: You may not agree reach a compromise Pollitt, but you can't dismiss her."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Berke, Roberta, Bounds carry out of Bounds: A Compass for Fresh American and British Poetry,Oxford University Break open (Oxford, England), 1981.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Mass 28, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres, spring, 1995, Boyd Zenner, consider of Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Unit and Feminism, p. 19.

Booklist, August, 1994, Mary Carroll, review of Reasonable Creatures, p. 2002; February 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Statecraft, and Culture, p. 1034; June 1, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of Virginity or Death! And Other Social enthralled Political Issues of Our Time, possessor. 22.

Georgia Review, summer, 1982, Peter Stitt, review of Antarctic Traveller.

Hudson Review, coldness, 1982-83, Dana Gioia, review of Antarctic Traveller.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2001, consider of Subject to Debate, p. 39; April 15, 2006, review of Virginity or Death!, p. 397.

Library Journal, Hawthorn 15, 2006, Erica L. Foley, argument of Virginity or Death!, p. 116.

Ms., September-October, 1994, Mary Suh, review fence Reasonable Creatures, p. 78.

Nation, March 20, 1982, Richard Howard, review of Antarctic Traveller.

New Republic, April 14, 1982, Fool Parini, review of Antarctic Traveller.

New Student & Society, March 3, 1995, Kirsty Milne, review of Reasonable Creatures, proprietor. 37.

New York, October 10, 1994, Conductor Kirn, review of Reasonable Creatures, proprietor. 78.

New Yorker, October 17, 1994, analysis of Reasonable Creatures, p. 121.

New Royalty Times Book Review, March 14, 1982, Bruce Bennett, review of Antarctic Traveller; October 9, 1994, Susan Shapiro, debate of Reasonable Creatures, p. 22; Feb 25, 2001, Arianne Cher- nock, look at of Subject to Debate, p. 19; July 2, 2006, Ana Marie Steersman, review of Virginity or Death!, proprietress. 11.

Poetry, December, 1982, review of Antarctic Traveller.

Poets & Writers, March-April, 1997, Color Stephenson, "Katha Pollitt," author interview, holder. 32.

Progressive, December, 1994, Ruth Conniff, "Katha Pollitt," p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, June 27, 1994, review of Reasonable Creatures, proprietress. 64; March 12, 2001, review chastisement Subject to Debate, p. 74; Apr 17, 2006, review of Virginity point toward Death!, p. 179.

Washington Post Book World, February 21, 1982; September 25, 1994, Maureen Corrigan, review of Reasonable Creatures, p. 10.

Women's Review of Books, Apr, 1995, Rickie Solinger, review of Reasonable Creatures, p. 1; July, 2000, "Reasonable Doubts," p. 11; April, 2001, Kathryn Abrams, "Refusing and Resisting," p. 1.

ONLINE

Freethought Today, (April 15, 2007), "Katha Pollitt: Freethought Heroine."

In These Times Web log, (October 27, 2006), Jessica Clark, press conference with Katha Pollitt.

Lip Magazine, (April 15, 2007), Jessica Clark, "Beyond the Government policy of Irony & Lip Gloss: Mainly Interview with Feminist Writer Katha Pollitt."

Nation Web site, (April 15, 2007), life of Katha Pollitt.