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photo by Christina Pabst
This week we welcome Katha Pollitt as our guest blogger. Pollitt's new book of poems, "The Mind-Body Problem," is just out from Random House. She is a columnist at The Nation and lives in New York City. Her collection of personal essays, "Learning to Drive," is out in paperback. Listen to Katha Pollitt's interview with Matthea Harvey here. Read her interview with Adam Gopnick for Granta here. And follow her blog here.
Welcome, Katha.
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Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
Inspiring!
Pollitt's new book
Has just now gone out
Thank Random House;
She is a columnist, "Learning to Drive"
That fair Katha Pollitt
With good Adam Gopnick
A lad and a lass and a near sort of rhyme.
Posted by: Percy Bisque Silley | August 06, 2009 at 09:21 PM
wow....
i appreciate your inspiring young writers,poets to grow...
I'm a poet from India...I edit a journal, Poesie India International which was started by my father, who is a poet and Professor of English. Our journal is completing its 25th year in 2009.
Posted by: Lesllie Trripathy | August 08, 2009 at 01:14 AM
Thank you, Leslie. I'm curious to know more about your journal and about some of the young poets in India and what they are up to these days.
Posted by: DL | August 08, 2009 at 04:41 PM
Loved he discussion about poems about poems. Here's one O wrote.
WHY I DRINK AT POETRY READINGS
Drunk on words? No,
drunk on this thermos of sangria,
my own recipe, cheap merlot,
leftover brandy, chopped-up lemons
& the tip of my right thumb
among the ice cubes, clicking,
a sound no one’s noticed.
The next to last poem compares
Marxism to a bicyclist leaning
against a silver fire hydrant,
admiring his day-glo orange shoes.
I don’t get it. Ask the sangria,
which I do. Consider the universe
of smells, the last poem asks us,
consider the mutt in the bookstore
sniffing the drowsy readers’ legs,
his tail slapping to beat the band.
Why that cliché? That particular
dumb cliché? Ask the sangria. . . .
Me? I’m loose
as a mesh coin purse, pacific
as the slowest suicide & I
smile, clapping to beat the band.
Posted by: Jefferson Carter | August 20, 2009 at 02:58 PM