Katha Pollitt Critical Essay | Critical Review by Joel Conarroe

SOURCE: A review of Antarctic Traveller, in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XII, No. 8, February 21, 1982, pp. 5, 13.

In the excerpt below, Conarroe, editor of PMLA and executive director of the Modern Language Association, praises Pollitt's use of sound and rhythm in her poetry.

It is notoriously difficult for a poet to get a first manuscript accepted (more Americans write verse than read it) and virtually impossible unless he or she has already been published in the better periodicals. Katha Pollitt, not quite 10 years out of Radcliffe, has been appearing regularly in such visible places as Poetry and The New Yorker, but until the arrival of her first book I had only a scattered sense of how consistently striking and accomplished she is, Antarctic Traveller is a stunning collection. One that I recommend to anyone who is discouraged about the state of American letters.

Pollitt herself...
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