Gossip: Writing poetry the Sarah Palin way

I really hate it when writers sneer at their subjects under the veil of reporting something:
Guardian.co.uk: Writing poetry the Sarah Palin way
Not keen on wading through the 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's recently released emails? Help is at hand in the form of Michael Solomon, who has turned them into poetry.


Well, not all of them, obviously, but after some assiduous "literary sleuthing" through the email trove, the executive editor of Byliner and former features director of The Daily Beast has "discovered ... language that was clearly intended to be poetry [and] the result is 50 previously unpublished poems by Alaska's comedic bard". He's just published I Hope Like Heck: The Selected Poems of Sarah Palin, and if this extract in The Daily Beast is anything to go by, they are gloriously absurd.


I love "Where There's Smoke":


One of Lyda's aides stopped me in the hall
To say the building was getting a kick
Out of my 'burnt toast' episode this morning
That caused the fire alarms to go off
For 20 minutes
And caused an evacuation.
She thought it was funny
I was cooking breakfast in the capitol
And burnt it.
I assured her
I was not in the building this morning,
I was not cooking breakfast here at any time,
And I did not burn any toast.
She looked at me warily,
I doubt she believed me.


And I'm moved by the plaintive last line of "I May Be Pretty Wimpy":


I may be pretty wimpy
About this family stuff,
But I feel like I'm at the breaking point
With the hurtful gossip about my family
That Sherry
And others
Get away with.
Bear with me.
I hate this part of the job
And many days
I feel like it's not worth it
When they have to put up with the hate
That spews from people like Sherry.
And there are others.


I am also chuckling at "I Hope Like Heck":


Also,
When asked about the Gravina Bridge—
I hope like heck
Lawmakers are smart enough
To chop that out
Of the state budget
So I don't have to.


As Solomon writes in his foreword, "Verse, like America, yearns to be free. Few 21st-century poets understand this better than Sarah Palin. Not since Walt Whitman first heard America singing has a writer captured the hopes and dreams of her people so effortlessly – and with so many gerunds." Indeed.


I wonder what an attempt to make poetry of my own emails would yield. Let's give it a try, with (complete with ee cummings-esque missing capitals) "Home from Down Under":


when
did you get here? are you
unjetlagged? i take it
not,
given the time
of your email


Does it work? Am I a bard in the manner of the "Belle of Wasilla"? Hmmm. I'd love to see your own email reformattings – and if they are poetic enough, I may even share more of my lyrical Sent box with you ...