The Nation: And Another Thing

Low-Income Students Need your Help! UPDATED

Katha Pollitt — 2009-10-21T11:36:30-05:00

The school year is well underway, and most of you know how savage the budget cuts have been. Excellent teachers who care about their students �yes, they exist! --are struggling along without proper books, supplies, and equipment. Classroom libraries lack books, science labs lack materials, art programs lack the most basic supplies-- like paint!

In wealthy suburbs, affluent parents help fill the gap, but schools in low-income neighborhoods can't raise extra funds that way. Result: We expect students to achieve more than ever � and that's a good thing � but we don't provide the tools they need and too often can't afford to purchase for themselves: review texts for AP classes, graphic calculators, class sets of novels, even basic items like notebooks.

You can help! On my Giving Page at www.donorschoose.org you can chip in to help buy a cello for an elementary-school music class in Mississippi, a class set of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" for an AP English class in Washington DC, review books for an AP psychology class in New York City, art supplies for "at-risk" middle-schoolers in North Carolina --and much more.

We hear a lot about ineffective, ill-prepared teachers, but the ones who put themselves out on www.donorschoose.org are the ones who desperately want their students to succeed and who, through no fault of their own, need our help to get the tools to do their job.

Can you help? You can give any amount -- even $5! Small donations add up. No funds to spare right now? Send the link to your lucky friends, post it on your blog or Facebook page.

Every child should have an opportunity to play a musical instrument, read great books, take challenging courses, and learn in a safe, well-equipped classroom. You can help make it happen!

BONUS: send me your receipt for $50 or more for a project on my Giving Page and I will send you a signed copy of The Mind-Body Problem, my new book of poems.

UPDATE: Thank you, Kelli from Santa Clarita, who is helping to purchase copies of "Guns, Germs and Steel" for a Global History honors class in a NYC school where 90% of the students qualify for free lunch. And thank you, Laura from Ithaca, who donated to fund review texts for an AP calculus class in a NYC high-poverty school AND also to buy paint for an art class in a high-poverty North Carolina middle school that focuses on "at risk" kids.

Note to commenters: It's great that you know all about what's wrong with the public schools (sarcastic eye roll), including teachers' poor "preperation" (like in spelling?), but what about chipping in to help kids who are in school right now and who have no say in school budgets or education policy or the priorities of teachers' unions?

You can light a candle AND curse the darkness. How about it?

Facebookers, Unite! Help MADRE Win the Causes Challenge

Katha Pollitt — 2009-10-15T10:54:15-05:00

The Facebook Causes application is running a contest among its member do-good organizations. Every day, the group that has the most individual donors that day wins $1000; runner up gets $500. The grand winner � most individual donors by November 6 �wins, get this, $50,000! The runner-up gets $25,000 and the five next highest gets $10,000 each. Not too shabby!

Now here's the thing: MADRE, the women's rights organization, has joined the contest to raise funds for its work protecting women's rights workers in Afghanistan, where as I'm sure you know many have been threatened with death by the Taliban. MADRE needs your help to win one of these these generous prizes. Can you help? Yes, you can! The competition is for donors, not money totals, so all you need to do is go here and donate $10. In fact, you can donate $10 once a day every day from now till November 6th. If Madre wins even one day, it will get $1000, which is a significant amount. Today, October 15, by 3pm , would be a great time to donate, because with just a few more donors MADRE would beat an anti-choice group, Make Abortion UNTHINKABLE, for second place. That's $500 for women's rights, or $500 to take them away. Which should it be?

Please check this contest out, Facebookers, and be generous. Don't delay, because each day's mini-contest ends at 3 pm.

Read all about MADRE's work at www.madre.org.

Berlin Postcard

Katha Pollitt — 2009-10-10T14:13:30-05:00

Saturday, October 3, was Reunification Day, the anniversary of the formal reuniting of East and West Germany in l990. Here in Berlin the big event was a weekend-long outdoor spectacle involving Die Riesen, giant marionettes created by the French street theatre company Royale de Luxe. Some two million people turned out to watch a huge little-girl giant and an even more enormous grown-up-man giant dressed as a deep-sea diver wandering in search of each other in various neighborhoods. It was meant as a 'maerchen" or fairy-tale, although no one seemed to know the story of the little girl and the deep-sea diver. Something about separation and reunion, anyway. Since it was a beautiful warm blue-sky day (one of the few! it rains a lot here) my husband and I set out to find them. We walked and walked through the Tiergarten and stood in a huge crowd on Unter den Linden but the promised giants didn't appear and eventually we had to leave. (Two bits of local anthropology you'd never see in New York: at the street fair stretching along Unter den Linden you could buy many kinds of alcoholic beverages, including schnapps, and just stand about pleasantly drinking; the great lawn in the Tiergarten, along which the crowds walked, was littered with the bicycles people had used to get there. Unlocked bicycles.)

My German teacher, Ursula, whom we ran into later, said the problem was that the little girl giant was kaputt. Sehr traurig! But late that night we saw the two giants at the Brandenburg Gate, sleeping. The little girl giant was sleeping on the big man giant's lap. You could hear them breathing very quietly. It was strangely moving.

In other news, Garrison Keillor reads my poems much better than I do:

"What I Understood"

Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends

Katha Pollitt — 2009-10-01T01:40:13-05:00

If a rapist escapes justice for long enough, should the world hand him a get-out-of-jail-free card? If you're Roman Polanski, world-famous director, a lot of famous and gifted people think the answer is yes. Polanski, who drugged and anally raped a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977 in Los Angeles, pled guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor and fled to Europe before sentencing. Now, 32 years later, he's been arrested in Switzerland on his way to the Zurich film Festival, prompting outrage from international culture stars: Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodavar, Woody Allen (insert your own joke here), Isabelle Huppert, Diane von Furstenberg and many, many more. Bernard-Henri Levy, who's taken a leading role in rounding up support, has said that Polanski "perhaps had committed a youthful error " (he was 43). Debra Winger, president of the Zurich Film Festival jury, wearing a red "Free Polanski" badge, called the Swiss authorities action "philistine collusion." Frederic Mitterand, the French cultural minister, said it showed "the scary side of America" and described Polanski as "thrown to the lions because of ancient history." French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, called the whole thing "sinister."

Closer to home, Whoopi Goldberg explained on 'The View' that his crime wasn't 'rape rape,' just, you know, rape. Oh, that! Conservative columnist Anne Applebaum minimized the crime in the 'Washington Post'. First, she overlooks the true nature of the crime (drugs, forced anal sex, etc), and then claims "there is evidence Polanski did not know her real age." Talk about a desperate argument. Polanski, who went on to have an affair with 15-year old Nastassja Kinski, has spoken frankly of his taste for very young girls. ('Nation' editor-in-chief Katrina vanden Heuvel, who tweeted her surprise at finding herself on the same side as Applebaum, has had second thoughts: "I disavow my original tweet supporting Applebaum. I believe that Polanski should not receive special treatment. Question now is how best to ensure that justice is served. Should he return to serve time? Are there other ways of seeing that justice is served? At same time, I believe that prosecutorial misconduct in this case should be investigated.") On the 'New York Times' op-ed page, schlock novelist Robert Harris celebrated his great friendship with Polanski, who has just finished filming one of Harris' books: "His past did not bother me." This tells us something about Harris' nonchalant view of sex crimes, but why is it an argument about what should happen in Polanski's legal case?

I just don't get this. I understand that Polanski has had numerous tragedies in his life, that he's made some terrific movies, that he's 76, that a 2008 documentary raised questions about the fairness of the judge (see Bill Wyman in Salon, though, for a persuasive dismantling of its case.). I also understand that his victim, now 44, says she has forgiven Polanski and wants the case to be dropped because every time it comes up she is dragged through the mud all over again. Certainly that is what is happening now. On the Huffington Post, Polanski fan Joan Z. Shore, who describes herself as co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality (Belgium), writes: " The 13-year-old model 'seduced' by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!)." Actually, in 1977 the age of consent in California was 16. Today it's 18, with exceptions for sex when one person is underage and the other is no more than three years older. Shore's view--that Polanski was the victim of a nymphet and her scheming mother--is all over the internet.

Perils of the Poetry Reading

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-29T22:26:40-05:00

Am I the only person who finds it hard to follow an unfamiliar poem when I hear it read out loud and don't have the text in front of me? Even when reading to myself at my own pace, I might have to go over a poem several times to really get it, but at a reading, the poems whizz by unstoppably-- no chance of a second hearing, and all the helpful visual cues of print , like punctuation, italics, quotation marks, and even line breaks, are absent. A stray thought enters my head -- I wonder why they painted this room turquoise? -- and in seconds I've lost the thread. (I'm speaking of what you might call "literary poetry" here, poetry written primarily to be read silently, not spoken word, which is intended for the ear from the outset.)

I often find that the poems I've enjoyed most at a reading seem oddly flat on the page when I hunt them down in a book. What made the poem seem striking and fresh was the poet's performance: the energy and especially the humor was in the voice and manner and gestures, not the words themselves. Or it was the story the poem told: the poetry reading as a series of anecdotes, with the poet placing and embellishing each one in his introductions: My uncle ran a chicken farm in Iowa, and when he ran off with the Methodist minister's wife my aunt killed all the chickens and gave them to the nuns, and out of that comes this next poem, "Saint Rooster and the Holy Choir of Hens." it's been suggested, in fact, that the proliferation of poetry readings, and their importance to a poet's career, has actually changed the way poets -- "literary poets" -- write, encouraging verbal simplicity, talkiness, easy emotions, simple narratives, and punchlines. It's the poet as stand-up comedian/tragedian.

Still, you can see why poets would try to shape their art to please their audience -- and notice how we now commonly speak of poetry's audience rather than poetry's readers, which tells you something right there. It can be painful and embarrassing to stand up before a small group of miscellaneous strangers who expect you to entertain them and instead offer poems they might find bewildering, or remote. I've given readings at which I just want to say, oh well, never mind, let's just go have a beer and talk about health care reform.

Wislawa Szymborska's "Poetry Reading" (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh) may be the definitive account of a reading at its awful, humiliating worst. To paraphrase the old Jewish joke about the Catskills hotel ("The food is terrible!" "Yes, and the portions are so small!"), the audience is not only tiny, it's not even listening. And yet, Symborska disperses her pity, her warmth and her satirical humor so evenly among poets and audience members and even the muse, poor thing, that what in lesser hands would be just another complaint about the world's indifference to art becomes a gesture of understanding, forgiveness, love.

POETRY READING

To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare --
it's time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,

A Friend Reports from a Town Hall Meeting

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-27T10:29:54-05:00

(Claire Moses, professor of women's studies at the University of Maryland, describes the town hall meeting on health care held by Democratic Rep. Jim Moran in Reston, Virginia, on August 25. Sounds pretty wild! Note that even when progressives make up the majority of the audience, the antis steal the show.--KP)

I just came from a Town Hall Meeting run by our congressional representative (Jim Moran, a progressive--favors the public option, etc.). He had Howard Dean with him to give a pep talk and to answer questions. One thing that the friends I was with all mentioned was that we have never been at such a political event where opposing sides were in attendance. We're so used to campaign rallies and civil rights, reproductive rights, and anti-war demonstrations--all of which give off good vibes because we're among so many people we agree with. Of course, there are the hecklers along the sides--but they're not participants. This was quite a bit different.

The event started at 7 p.m. The doors opened at 6, but MoveOn.org had suggested we get there before 5, and it's a good thing we did because the lines already snaked around and around. I don't know if we could have gotten in if we'd come any later. While waiting in line, we saw lots of protestors who were part of Lyndon Larouche's group (he lives around here; I don't know if their anti-Obama hate campaign is national). They had the Obama signs with the Hitler moustache. But I don't think they actually came into the meeting--just walked up and down the waiting line. (I believe that the doorkeepers were checking to see if everyone entering was from this Congressional District; but they obviously failed in at least one significant case--so I don't know how carefully they tracked this.)

Inside, the significant majority was progressive--and not just on healthcare: some of the people circling the auditorium had anti-war, anti-military signs and they got big applause. (Jim Moran voted against the Iraq war.) But there was also a significant minority against healthcare reform--with the expected anti-"socialism" or "we can't afford it" signs. None of the "anti" signs were too, too horrific. Not like the Larouchees outside with their Obama=Hitler signs. But there was a lot of chanting back and forth. And the antis tried hard to interrupt Moran. But still nothing horrific.

And then Moran introduced Dean--who got a resounding standing ovation from the audience. We quieted down...he began to speak...and before we knew what was happening stood up in the center of the auditorium and started screaming "we won't pay for murder"--or something like that. One man, in the center of the group, was standing on a chair--looking like an orchestra leader--and immediately Moran recognized him and named him: it was Randall Terry! It was amazing! I do believe that they were after Dean--because they did nothing to protest, or participate in the anti-healthcare reform chants, or any interrupting until Dean started to speak. (Moran votes always in favor of whatever reproductive rights issue might come up in the House, but Terry's group didn't interrupt his almost hour-long talk.) Anyway--Moran told the audience who he was, and everyone (well, I suppose not "everyone") started chanting "go home." Moran actually offered him an opportunity to talk: offered him the choice of asking his question (offered him 5 minutes!) or he would be escorted out of the auditorium. Since Terry didn't choose to ask a question, he and his entire entourage were escorted out and calm was restored and that was that. Of course, there were more interruptions--but at least it was from the group that opposed healthcare reform.

The question-and-answer portion of the meeting was worthless. Moran took questions equally from the pro- and the anti- groups-but none of the questions were enlightening in either direction. And I have to say, if I were opposed to reform, I'd have been upset by the way Moran cut them off.

The one thing I can say, though, is that after this meeting I have a much better idea of what's in the House bill that is most likely to be passed (H.R. 3200).

On the other hand, some of the sloganeering--on our side--bothers me, because it is just plain wrong. The purpose is supposed to be to reassure people who fear "change," but all it does is water down the importance of the change. For example, Moran talked about the problems with the insurance companies and how some of the regulations and minimum standards and the existence of the public option will rein them in. He even talked about the horrors of insurance denied, etc. Then he said that "85% of Americans are covered by private health insurance and they needn't worry that anything for them will change." You've heard this same statement from Obama--how can they be so stupid as to keep repeating this "nothing will change" statement! There were other things like this: "no employer can make any employee take the public option." But what happens when employers drop health insurance, as so many have done and more will do? won't that "force" employees into the public option? Not that I'm opposed to the public option--but this kind of talking out of both sides cannot help our case.

Voting in Kabul

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-23T14:02:58-05:00

(Women for Afghan Women, a humanitarian organization I've supported for many years, runs a shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence in Kabul, and a smaller one in Mazar-i-sharif. In this update to her August 19th letter detailing the anxiety leading up to election day, WAW executive director Manizha Naderi reports on voting in Afghan elections on August 20. For more information about WAW, and to make a donation, go here.)

Dear WAW Supporters:

Thank you for all the supportive emails we have received since my last update a few days ago.

All of you have probably heard from news reports, the elections went on as planned and with far fewer violent attacks than we all expected. The Afghan news reports said that there were 135 rocket attacks around Afghanistan and about 20 people were killed.

Our centers, staff and clients were safe. There were no incidents. Now we are all waiting for the announcement of the winner. The government has forecasted that there will be demonstrations. I might close the Kabul Family Guidance Center for another few days when that happens.

On election day I went to vote. I went with my husband, his sister Naseema, her two sons, and also my babysitter Nafis Gul and her daughter. Everything was peaceful. Turnout was low. Besides us there were 4 other men there to vote. This was the first time that Nafis gul and Naseema were voting. I was very excited for them.

While I was at the polls there were no other women there besides us. But from what we've heard, women showed up at the polls everywhere. More women voted in the North than in the South (for obvious reasons). The Taliban had threatened anyone who voted and had ink on their fingers. They said that they will cut that finger. Even then these brave people went out to vote. But overall voter turnout was lower than last time.

It was incredibly empowering to vote. It was my first time to vote in Afghanistan. It was even more empowering for Nafis Gul and Naseema. This was their first time to vote in their lives. They didn't know what to expect. Before the elections I had spoken to them about how important it was to vote. I told them that if they didn't vote, they couldn't complain later about the results. So it was like their birthday. It was very special.

Everyone is now waiting for the results. People are afraid if Karzai wins, then Dr. Abdullah's people are going to hold violent demonstrations.

Karzai--we've seen what he's done already. His major plan if he wins is to negotiate with the Taliban-which WAW is against.

Dr. Abdullah--His major flaw is that he was a warlord during the civil wars. WAW stands in solidarity with leaders like Malalai Joya who risked her life by denouncing the presence of warlords in the institutions which govern the nation. Men who have killed and raped have no place in the government, let alone as President.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai--He's the most qualified although he probably won't win the election. In the TV debates, Mr. Ahmadzai won every debate. He has really good plans for the economy. He's the only person who talked a little about bringing women into the government.

I was dismayed that all candidates downplayed women's roles. It was like they didn't want to talk about women. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah have claimed victory. People think that if Karzai wins Dr. Abdullah's people will become violent.

I am happy that the election took place, but since it looks like Karzai is going to win, I am not very hopeful. We will have the same old again. More corruption and wasting money. This time, he'll negotiate with the Taliban. Hopefully I'll be wrong about him. Women here are angry that Karzai signed the Shi'ia law in such a stealthy way right before the elections. We are waiting to see the full text of the law that was signed before we make an official WAW comment.

I will write again soon about the two clients who arrived in our shelter on the night before election day. Our drivers drove them from the police station to the shelter in the middle of the night. I will be meeting them today.

It is a huge comfort to know that our supporters are now beginning to hear more about our day to day work in Afghanistan and the tensions and challenges of doing work in a war zone. I am grateful to each one of you for caring. Do send us a donation if you can, as much or as little as you can.

Manizha Naderi
Executive Director, Women for Afghan Women

Letter from Kabul

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-19T17:31:18-05:00

(Women for Afghan Women, a humanitarian organization I've supported for many years, runs a shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence in Kabul, and a smaller one in Mazar-i-sharif. In this urgent letter, Manizha Naderi details local conditions as the country prepares to vote on August 20th. I'm reprinting it here with WAW's permission. For more information about WAW, and to make a donation, go here.)

Wonderful Supporters of WAW,

Writing this quickly because internet keeps failing. Security is really bad in Kabul. Yesterday there were 2 suicide bombings and 6 rockets attacks. Today 5 suicide bombers were holding up a bank in the city. They were killed along with 4 police men. And I have been hearing the sounds of rockets all day today but the media is not allowed to report on any violence until after the elections.

I have been under a lot of stress lately. I have over 100 staff members and 112 people in our shelters to keep safe.

For the past two weeks, our staff have stayed in the office and we have not been doing home visits to clients. Starting today our centers are closed, and staff has been asked to stay at home. I've asked our drivers to take the cars home with them so if there are any emergencies, they can get to the shelter fast.

We currently have 68 women and 12 children in the Kabul shelter and 32 women and 4 children in the Mazar shelter. Last night the police called us and referred 2 new cases to us.

We have tried to ensure the participation of women in the elections. We have helped many women (our clients who are living at home rather than in our shelters) get registered to vote. I have also encouraged our staff to vote on election day.

We cannot take the women from the shelter to vote on election day. It will simply be too dangerous. Also I don't want people in the neighborhood to find out that a lot of women are living in one house.

I will try and send another update soon. Thank you all for caring about this beleaguered country and it's women and girls. Please pray for us during these terrifying days.

Manizha Naderi
Executive Director, Women for Afghan Women

Perils of the Poetry Reading

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-19T17:06:00-05:00

POETRY READING

Readers Real and Ideal

Katha Pollitt — 2009-08-10T10:25:02-05:00

(I posted this at The Best American Poetry last Friday. I'm going to be blogging there regularly about poetry. I hope you'll take a look.)

I love the Gertrude Stein quip David Comiskey posted in response to my last blog: "I write for myself and strangers." that just about covers it, doesn't it? Another reader sent in a different version: "I write for myself and strange people." That's probably just as true. For some more portraits of the reader in one's head, I queried members of WOM-PO, a listserv of mostly poets (both sexes) devoted to discussion of poetry by women. Here are some answers: Emily Dickinson, YOU, "the me which is that feathered thing alive and barnacled on/as my soul," "people who need my words," a friend in Colorado with whom the poet has exchanged a weekly poem for the past 33 (!) years, "my former next-door neighbor, Joan, who didn't go to college, but who is a terrific reader," a longstanding poetry critique group, a local poetry listserv in Sebastopol, CA. Linda Rodriguez says she writes for "a literate, reading person somewhere out there in the world, someone curious who wants to see beneath the surface of life" -- a version of Virginia Woolf's Common Reader -- but others longed to reach people, including their relatives, who didn't read poetry and who might be electrified by something they wrote. "When I find a fifteen year old girl in a small town somewhere that has read a poem and gone on to the library filled with questions," writes Sina Queyras, "Well, that's what it's about for me." If that doesn't happen, don't lose heart. As Kate Bernadette Benedict points out "My internalized reader may not even be born yet!"

Mary Oliver agrees with Benedict. "I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now," she wrote in "A Poetry Handbook." Of course, Oliver is one of the most popular poets in America right this minute -- it's not like she's waiting for posterity to catch up with her. Billy Collins, the other most popular poet, has a riff on Oliver. It's a funny poem, but I can't decide if he's making fun of her. Is he mocking her somewhat vatic claim on posterity, debunking the idea of posterity as anything special, ruefully deflating the concept of universality, or even comparing Oliver's poetry to a wet dog? What do you think?

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

'I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now. - Mary Oliver'

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.