New York poet to give reading as part of English Dept. series

. . . Tomorrow you will wake up ordinary. So promises "Ballet Blanc," a poem by New York City poet Katha Pollitt. But today, Pollitt promises to be anything but ordinary as she reads from her works at the University as part of an English Department speaker series. Pollitt, who has published a volume of poetry called Antarctic traveller, will read some of her printed and unprinted works. The 42-year-old poet is also a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and has written several essays on feminist issues, including abortion rights. Greg Djanikian, acting director of the Writing Program, said he invited Pollitt to campus because he "really likes her poems" and has taught her work in poetry workshops in the past. "She's never effusive, although the poems deal with very intense and emotional subject matter," English lecturer Djanikian said. "I really like the language, the imagery, her technical ability, the craft which went into the poems." Although Pollitt is also active in journalism and writes essays for various magazines, she said words form themselves into poems most easily. "You don't really get to choose [your writing style]," Pollitt said. "I think peoples' minds work in particular directions, and for me, poetry is a way of using language that appeals to me at a very deep level." Pollitt's poems deal with a spectrum of subjects and cover a range of places and people around the globe, such as "A Turkish Story," "Of the Scythians," and "Parthians." She tends to focus on emotions and uses illustrative words. Djanikian said he finds Pollitt's poetry emotional and sees it as expressing people's concerns for an "otherness." "She seems most concerned with people's longing for lives which they do not live," Djanikian said. "And how sometimes if the longing and the desire is intense enough, how they succeed in passing over from one life into the other, but how for most of us the longing suffices." Pollitt said it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where she gets her inspiration, saying ideas "will just come to me." "Inspiration is one of those words that makes writers blush," Pollitt said. "Sometimes a phrase will just connect up with something else in my life . . . and I'll turn it over and turn it over and gradually a poem collects in my mind." Pollitt, who graduated from Radcliffe College and Columbia University, has lived in New York City for most of her life. She said she is drawn to urban life because of the constant activity, which is fodder for thought and writing. "It's a place where things happen," Pollitt said. "When you go out into the street, you see something, it's sometimes something you don't want to see, but there's always something to respond to." Pollitt will read her poems this afternoon at 4 p.m. in the Philomathean room on fourth floor College Hall.

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