Sarah Palin, Poet

As you watch tonight's vice-presidential debate—remember, it's the one and only, the one you'll tell your grandchildren about—you may want to skip the buzzword bingo and instead simply think of it as a poetry reading.

That's right: Gov. Sarah Palin is a poet. Just ask Hart Seely. While other listeners struggle to diagram Palin's sentences, Seely hears not bafflegab but "intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra."

Now Seely—who five years ago compiled the "found poems" of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—brings us the poetry of Sarah Palin, compiled verbatim from three interview transcripts. Here's a sample:

"Befoulers of the Verbiage"

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)

(Note: For this poem to scan properly, verbiage must be pronounced in the Palin dialect: verbidge.)

And here's an example of Zen Palin:

"Haiku"

These corporations.
Today it was AIG,
Important call, there.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)

Because the raw material is in the public domain, Palin poems are an open-source project. Here's my own contribution to the oeuvre:

"Priorities"

These are critical

and again it’s

a matter of prioritizing

and a matter of

government understanding

its proper role in public safety,

is health care,

so it’s a matter

of priorities.

 

- Alaska gubernatorial debate sponsored by AARP, October 2006

 

 

Comments

[Jonathon]

I was surprised to learn recently that the two-syllable pronunciation of verbiage is not the standard one. That's how I always remember hearing it, and I definitely do not share a dialect with Sarah Palin. Same goes for the word foliage—I pronounce it like "foe-lidge."

[Nancy Friedman]

@Jonathon: Well, at least you don't say FOIL-idge.