SOURCE: A review of Antarctic Traveller in Poetry, Vol. CXLI, No. 3, December, 1982, pp. 178-79.

In the following excerpt, Shaw argues that Pollitt is most insightful when she remains detached from her subjects.

At the center of Katha Pollitt's Antarctic Traveller, her first book, are "Five Poems from Japanese Paintings." Even without these one would have noted in her writing those qualities which for the Japanese, as she says, encompass "the virtues of the noble man: / reticence, calm, clarity of mind." Whether inspired by paintings or daily surroundings, Pollitt's poems are marked by a beautiful economy of line, a selective cherishing of detail. The Orient's respect for nuance underlies her similes: on the Hudson "a sailboat quivers like a white leaf in the wind:; on a Japanese screen "Prince Genji, the great lover, / sails in triumph from bedroom to bedroom: in each / a woman flutters like a tiny jeweled...