Katha Pollitt

Clinton

Poetry Editor at LIBER: A Feminist Review

Politics, poetry, feminism, books, life. New Book is Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (Picador). https://t.co/lHngfc0UEG Woman. Life. Freedom.

Articles

The “Crisis” of Male Adolescence Is Nothing New

3 weeks ago | thenation.com | Katha Pollitt

The “Crisis” of Male Adolescence Is Nothing NewBoys don’t need special treatment—it’s entitlement that’s getting them into trouble.
How Far Will 8 Years of Trump Set Back American Women?

2 months ago | thenation.com | Katha Pollitt

How Far Will 8 Years of Trump Set Back American Women? The president and his cronies are committed to rolling progress back to the Stone Age. The effects could outlast his second term.
Let’s Cool It With the Hot Takes

Jan 14, 2025 | thenation.com | Katha Pollitt

Subject to Debate / January 14, 2025 Let’s Cool It With the Hot TakesMuch of the immediate commentary on the election turned out to be wrong. If we want to avoid the same outcome in the future, we’d better slow down. Ad Policy (Getty) This article appears in the February 2025 issue, with the headline “More Heat Than Light.”First thing on that dark, dark morning after Election Day, I woke up and e-mailed my editor at The Nation to ask if I could write about why Trump had won.
Sylvia Plath Turned 89 Today

Jan 7, 2025 | libertiesjournal.com | Katha Pollitt |Jake Harrison

Sunrise lines a cloud: flamingo silk in an old fur coat. Seagulls catch the wind like scraps of paper. She’s been up for hours, wrapped in her old plaid bathrobe. Migraine. Lightning flashes behind her eyelids. She drinks her coffee and writes: the tattered world. Later there will be champagne and candlelight Phone calls from overseas. She’ll watch the full moon rise over the blue deeps and write a dreaming Fury. Who said to kill yourself for a man Is a waste of a good suicide?
Reading Marcus Aurelius in September

Jan 7, 2025 | libertiesjournal.com | Katha Pollitt |Jake Harrison

Ripe olives drop from the tree, grapes glow green in the sun, bursting, already smelling a little of decay. A thousand miles away, the emperor slogs through mud with his grumbling soldiers. His son is worthless, possibly insane. At night in his tent he writes of odd accidental pleasures: bread splitting its crust in the oven — why do we love it? — and urges himself to embrace his fate, like a rock in the ocean, waves boiling.
Going Gray - Liberties

Jan 7, 2025 | libertiesjournal.com | Katha Pollitt |Jake Harrison

My witchy hair so furious and alive stands up and crackles like a scratched 78 Galli-Curci singing from the moon Sempre libera! It’s an owl’s nest twigs and feathers and bones and rain a straw broom forgotten in a corner but still capable of spontaneous combustion so watch out. There’s joy in taking your final shape if it’s what you’re meant to be. Who needs color anyway when the ocean in winter is so voracious and so beautiful?
Ancestors - Liberties

Jan 7, 2025 | libertiesjournal.com | Katha Pollitt |Jake Harrison

Behind us, centuries of child brides split open in childbirth peasants fleeing bent under sacks of grain small boys who hid in the outhouse when the soldiers came for the family. Every one of us a survivor of survivors. Ishmael waves as he floats by on a coffin. Even the one-eyed cat slinking off round the corner had to have come from a lucky line of cats. My dear, my dear how is it we are here drinking green wine at the café in the square under the autumn leaves?
How Entertainment Mangled Public Discourse

Nov 19, 2024 | newrepublic.com | Katha Pollitt

Iwas a skeptic when Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: PublicDiscourse in the Age of Show Business came out in 1985. A book attackingthe frivolity of television seemed, well, frivolous, just another trendyoverhyped attack on the way we live now. Hadn’t people always loved popculture, entertainment, fun? Hadn’t public discourse always included plenty ofshow business?
How Entertainment Mangled Public Discourse

Nov 19, 2024 | yahoo.com | Katha Pollitt

I was a skeptic when Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business came out in 1985. A book attacking the frivolity of television seemed, well, frivolous, just another trendy overhyped attack on the way we live now. Hadn’t people always loved pop culture, entertainment, fun? Hadn’t public discourse always included plenty of show business?
The War on Gaza Is an Outrage. Sitting Out the Election Could Make It Worse.

Nov 1, 2024 | thenation.com | Katha Pollitt

Politics / November 1, 2024 The War on Gaza Is an Outrage. Sitting Out the Election Could Make It Worse. Either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is going to win the presidency. Not voting, or voting third party, risks putting Palestinians in even more danger.