On Tuesday July 7th at 7pm Katha Pollitt will read from her new collection of
poetry, The Mind-Body Problem at Bookcourt (163
Court Street in Cobble Hill.

Her first collection of poetry in 27 years, the book is a follow-up to the acclaimed
"Antarctic Traveller", which won the National Book Critics Circle
Award for Poetry in 1982.

Pollitt, a Brooklyn Heights native, is perhaps best known for her column "Subject to Debate" in The Nation
magazine. She has also published work in The New Yorker, Harper's
Magazine, Ms. magazine and The New York Times.

Her essays have been published in collections including, Learning to Drive; And Other Life Stories,  Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time and Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, nineteen essays that first appeared in The Nation and other journals. Here is the title poem from her new poetry collection

Mind-Body Problem

by Katha Pollitt

When I think of myself I feel sorry not for myself

but for my body.  It was not so direct

and simple, so rational in its desires,

wanting to be touched the way an otter

loves water, the way a giraffe

wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling

the tender leaves at the tops of the trees.  It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer

because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled

with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions

that made me tyrannize and patronize it

like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious

English-professor husband ashamed of his wife—

her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles

and regional vowels.  Perhaps

my body would have liked to make some of our dates,

to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl

with "None of your business!"  Perhaps

it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.

If we had had a more democratic arrangement

we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,

to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis

and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,

instead of the current curious shift of power

in which I find I am being reluctantly

dragged along by my body as though by some

swift and powerful dog.  How eagerly

it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,

as though it knows exactly where we are going.