Sarah Palin, the poetry
Did I ever mention that our children are our future? Think about that.
Enough with the Sarah Palin fest you say? Not until we hear about the guys who have been chopping and tossing her speeches and remarks into poetry. Then, maybe. Here’s the backstory.
In October, six weeks into her campaign for VP, Hart Seely suggested in Slate that Palin’s speeches and remarks were confusing and disjointed enough to make great free verse.
Then London’s Julian Gough spent his Christmas 2008 adding a few more poems, based entirely on her remarks, to the Palin canon, in Prospect magazine.
This past weekend, John Lundberg added a few new ones at huffpo, bringing her “land of the free” verse up to date with things she said about her recent decision to resign as governor of Alaska.
Lundberg’s inspiration?
Julian Gough of the UK’s Prospect Magazine opined facetiously this past December that “Palin is a poet, and a fine one at that. What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse.” His example of this “fruitful ambiguity” is a found poem he termed “The Relevance of Africa:”
And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the
Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska’s.
Gough elaborated on his tongue-in-cheek theory: “A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges….
via John Lundberg: Sarah Palin, The Anti-Poet.
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“A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges….”
Wish I had said that!
And remember, Sarah, as one unhinged door closes, another opens.
In response to another comment. See in context »I suspect her door is the revolving kind (I’m not sure what that means but I like the sound of it).
In response to another comment. See in context »As with all good politicians, if we like the way it plays, we’ll find a way to make it mean something.
In response to another comment. See in context »Maybe it’s because she’s so dizzy!
In response to another comment. See in context »Vicki –
I love this. Tho’ I hope Don Rumsfeld plagues us no more but instead receives unto himself plague-like symptoms, I have to admit I miss his freestyling. And while he was frequently impenetrable, Sarah Palin does in fact seem to come unhinged before our very eyes—so much that she sometimes instills in me a kind of voyeur’s guilt: I know I should turn away, but just don’t have the strength …
Hey Jeff! So so true. It is voyeurism, because she thinks she’s invited us to see her, but she doesn’t seem to know what we’re seeing when we take her up on the offer. Like a cat or a fighting fish, she knows it’s not good, but what is it, what is it? Rumsfeld projected nothing but I know what it is and you don’t. Who’s more fun or frustrating? It’s a toss.
In response to another comment. See in context »I hope everyone is ready for more of her eloquence. I cannot wait until she begins her run for president and the nightly news is filled with her oddly wonderful rhetoric. I will not be sad when she loses, however.
Hey Nick! I am still laughing over your Amish/ vampire Rumspringa line. But Amish vampires aside, there’s a little John Ashbery in Palin — the stops and starts, the missing sections in the middle. The way he captures thought as it tumbles out, before we arrange it to create a myth of ourself. Except, of course, he makes sense and has wonderful ideas and opinions embedded in his lines. And orchestrates his leaps carefully to create second and third intended meanings. But other than that, interchangeable.
I can see the John Ashbery in Palin. Perhaps she should blurb his next book? Or he should lend some kind words to her forthcoming book?
In response to another comment. See in context »Now that would be newsworthy.