Katha Pollitt has an extraordinarily good ear. Her lines are almost always exactly right, and there is a sense of finish and finality to her work one rarely sees nowadays in poets young or old—the diction clean and precise, the rhythms clear and effective. One can hear all of these virtues in "Blue Window," the opening poem of her Antarctic Traveller. (p. 644)

Pollitt is also refreshing in that she is not afraid to write beautifully. She has a fine sensibility and does not try to hide it under a hard or aggressive mask. She is original enough to shun the predictable clichés of "beautiful" description and carefully avoids sentimentality when presenting emotions. As a result she can create bewitchingly effective scenes when she chooses, as in "Moon and Flowering Plum" from her "Five Poems from Japanese Paintings."… (p. 645)

One needn't remember Marianne Moore's definition of poetry as "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" to know that "Moon and Flowering Plum" is the genuine article. This poem, however, not only illustrates Pollitt's style but also her aesthetic. For her, poetry is primarily the recreation and examination of those small epiphanies which suddenly illuminate one's life…. Du musst dein Leben ändern, the silent imperative of Rilke's archaic torso of Apollo, "You must change your life," seems echoed throughout Pollitt's work. But it is only in … [her] imagined poems, however, that she can translate illumination into action. In those poems which seem to be more directly based on her personal experience she can feel the unexpected moments of enlightenment but they find no release, only a transitory heightening of awareness for the world around her. The epiphany diminishes into an aperçu, and her poems become brilliantly fluid renditions of a passive imagist aesthetic. At these times one suspects that Pollitt undersells her conspicuous talent by not pursuing the perceptions further—wherever they may lead.

This latent strain of aestheticism dictates the nature of Pollitt's successes. She is at her enviable best in those poems which she can treat as closed systems—musical compositions sealed off from the world which she can perfect measure by measure, bringing every word or image into resolution with some underlying harmony. Her striking poem, "Of the Scythians," for instance, literally approaches the conditions of music and could profitably be analyzed in strictly musical terms independent of its meaning. Likewise her five beautiful poems on Japanese paintings present Pollitt's skillful transposition from one closed system to another…. When Pollitt's poems do not work, it is usually because some foreign elements intruded which she could not control. In "Failure" a wonderful beginning is undermined by a few lines in the second half which destroy the tone. But if this perfectionism and quest for control limits Pollitt's range, it is also the source of her strength. She is an exceptionally accomplished young poet who has mastered her craft. She is a poet to watch…. (pp. 645-46)