Small Comfort by: Katha Pollitt

When Katha Pollitt's wonderful book of poems, Antarctic Traveller (the “adventurous” title belies Pollitt's skill, displayed in several of the poems, at seeing the poetic material inherent in her home turf of New York City), was published in 1982, it seemed to launch a promising poetic career. But Pollitt went on to concentrate on nonfiction with such books as Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, and Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism.

At last, this year, Pollitt offers her second poetry collection, The Mind-Body Problem. It was worth the wait, simply because many of its poems ...