I remember when Sarah Palin's emails were released, reporters and pundits were quickly disappointed. I remember thinking that there couldn't possibly be a story there, that there's no way Palin's team didn't comb through the text and eliminate the bad bits. Turns out that was the case: nothing salacious or juicy or scandalous. The good stuff was probably redacted or withheld. In typical over-hyped cable news fashion, I heard more about how heavy and numerous they were than about what they contained. This was a peculiar news story for me because, being a nosy person and a person who loves politics, I should have been excited about them. I wasn't.
In some respects, I think Michael Solomon was trying to salvage that story, or the disappointment of the story. If she's not going to give us something news-worthy, he'll make it so. Except that he doesn't.
I ended up having lots of questions about "I Hope Like Heck." The foreword immediately rubbed me the wrong way. Sarah Palin as literary scholar, Palin as poet, Palin as towering historical figure. Okay. I get what he's doing--ridiculing Palin through an exaggerated mythology, making a statement that she's no more fit to be an author than president, and he no more fit to be a poet--but all the jokes are obvious, cheesy, or mean-spirited. For example:
This continued into the first poem. He leaves Palin's spelling errors in, so we get:
In contrast, a poem that does work is "Out of the Loop." It's one of the few pieces that has a poetic feel to it (at least the first five lines or so) and it characterizes Palin and her situation in a more honest way. There's a hecticness to it ("there's some/Kind of briefing/Next week.") that's both true to life (I can't imagine how much a governor has to keep track of) and playful in regards to Palin's image ("Sounds like u/Know more about it/Than I do."). Here she's both the dopey pol with the silly accent and the harried leader. This is a poem I can get behind.
Another one that works is "One Too Many Lunches." Its constant repetition of "He" coupled with the line breaks emphasize the blame Palin put on other people and we get to see Palin vent about something frustrating. I was left wondering who "he" was.
I could go on: I was puzzled by "Haiku" (what's he trying to say by not making it a proper haiku?) and I really loved "Semper Paratus" (one of the few places where the line breaks felt poetic--Palin's in the moment in the middle, the recipient is watching her back and future). But overall, "I Hope Like Heck" felt pretty shallow. Like Solomon was piggybacking off the hype over Palin's email dump, like he was trying to make a quick and potentially controversial buck off of a gimmick.
His process isn't clear, either. Did he alter the text at all besides line breaks and capitalization? My sense is no, especially with the weirdest portion of the book, Trig's birth announcement (seriously, wtf was that?). So rather than go all out and make a personal statement about Palin by twisting her words to become something different, he stuck primarily with what she said. I can think of a few reason for this. It keeps the book almost totally nonfiction, and therefore criticisms of the text defer to Palin alone. It's easier. And it gets people (like me?) who didn't read the emails to at least see some of them in their near-actual form.
I was really hoping, though, for a more substantial manipulation. This feels wishy-washy and in between to me, like Solomon was hesitant to really say something or make a bigger point with the poems. Be mean and biting or play it straight, not this middle ground business. His foreword leans critical and makes me expect he's going to get at something with his manipulation, but ultimately that's unrealized. It's more like, here's wacky Palin at it again, and he just changed the presentation. Sure it's fun to see Palin's writing style and topics, but as the media learned, it's not enough. Maybe that's his point--that this isn't quite journalism or entertainment, not serious or entirely funny, just like the Palin phenomenon is. On a generous day, I could give him that. But I won't read this again or recommend it.
As I learned with the "Pig" mashup, it's hard to use other people's writing and turn it into something new, so I'll say that for Solomon. It's also interesting, as one commenter put it on a write-up of the book, to see the relative lack of substance in the emails. (An aside: Solomon is editor at both Byliner and The Daily Beast and "Heck" was of course featured in both places. Does that weird anyone else out a little? You have to take advantage of anywhere you can to publicize your work, I understand that, but the reprinting of poems at TBD with no commentary or anything else next to them looks like unabashed marketing and I don't know what to make of it.) All in all, "Heck" is a fun little exercise for ninety-nine cents (they lowered the price, as far as I can tell, after people complained about it). It doesn't have to be more than that, I suppose, but I was hoping it would be.
In some respects, I think Michael Solomon was trying to salvage that story, or the disappointment of the story. If she's not going to give us something news-worthy, he'll make it so. Except that he doesn't.
I ended up having lots of questions about "I Hope Like Heck." The foreword immediately rubbed me the wrong way. Sarah Palin as literary scholar, Palin as poet, Palin as towering historical figure. Okay. I get what he's doing--ridiculing Palin through an exaggerated mythology, making a statement that she's no more fit to be an author than president, and he no more fit to be a poet--but all the jokes are obvious, cheesy, or mean-spirited. For example:
What makes this new collection of fifty early works so exciting is that they are previously undiscovered. Found in an electronic cache in the Alaska governor's office, 'I Hope Like Heck'--whose title poem has obvious echoes of Emily Dickinson's 'Hope is a thing with feathers'--has an undeniable epistolary quality to it, almost as though Palin were writing hasty e-mails to co-workers, friends, and family.He's mocking her ("previously undiscovered" as if she were some kind of lit phenom), making it seem like some kind of fantastic discovery (which it wasn't), alluding to Dickinson (which strikes me as him trying to explain what he meant to do), and this weird cheeky "epistolary" comment. Taken together, these work to undercut Palin and the poems. I agree with the sentiment he's getting at, but the writing itself and the approach is lackluster and actually makes me feel bad for him.
This continued into the first poem. He leaves Palin's spelling errors in, so we get:
Some of my best memoriesThe line break emphasizes the mistyped "feel" in such a way that it makes Solomon look like a jerk. Haha, look at her say stupid things in print too! Why start with that? Twenty-some thousand emails and she makes a few typos--so what? This moment feels like the entire point of this poem and that's sad. (I should say, I'm very much a descriptivist when it comes to grammar.)
Growing up
Are of hunting with my dad
To help
Feel
Our freezer.
In contrast, a poem that does work is "Out of the Loop." It's one of the few pieces that has a poetic feel to it (at least the first five lines or so) and it characterizes Palin and her situation in a more honest way. There's a hecticness to it ("there's some/Kind of briefing/Next week.") that's both true to life (I can't imagine how much a governor has to keep track of) and playful in regards to Palin's image ("Sounds like u/Know more about it/Than I do."). Here she's both the dopey pol with the silly accent and the harried leader. This is a poem I can get behind.
Another one that works is "One Too Many Lunches." Its constant repetition of "He" coupled with the line breaks emphasize the blame Palin put on other people and we get to see Palin vent about something frustrating. I was left wondering who "he" was.
I could go on: I was puzzled by "Haiku" (what's he trying to say by not making it a proper haiku?) and I really loved "Semper Paratus" (one of the few places where the line breaks felt poetic--Palin's in the moment in the middle, the recipient is watching her back and future). But overall, "I Hope Like Heck" felt pretty shallow. Like Solomon was piggybacking off the hype over Palin's email dump, like he was trying to make a quick and potentially controversial buck off of a gimmick.
His process isn't clear, either. Did he alter the text at all besides line breaks and capitalization? My sense is no, especially with the weirdest portion of the book, Trig's birth announcement (seriously, wtf was that?). So rather than go all out and make a personal statement about Palin by twisting her words to become something different, he stuck primarily with what she said. I can think of a few reason for this. It keeps the book almost totally nonfiction, and therefore criticisms of the text defer to Palin alone. It's easier. And it gets people (like me?) who didn't read the emails to at least see some of them in their near-actual form.
I was really hoping, though, for a more substantial manipulation. This feels wishy-washy and in between to me, like Solomon was hesitant to really say something or make a bigger point with the poems. Be mean and biting or play it straight, not this middle ground business. His foreword leans critical and makes me expect he's going to get at something with his manipulation, but ultimately that's unrealized. It's more like, here's wacky Palin at it again, and he just changed the presentation. Sure it's fun to see Palin's writing style and topics, but as the media learned, it's not enough. Maybe that's his point--that this isn't quite journalism or entertainment, not serious or entirely funny, just like the Palin phenomenon is. On a generous day, I could give him that. But I won't read this again or recommend it.
As I learned with the "Pig" mashup, it's hard to use other people's writing and turn it into something new, so I'll say that for Solomon. It's also interesting, as one commenter put it on a write-up of the book, to see the relative lack of substance in the emails. (An aside: Solomon is editor at both Byliner and The Daily Beast and "Heck" was of course featured in both places. Does that weird anyone else out a little? You have to take advantage of anywhere you can to publicize your work, I understand that, but the reprinting of poems at TBD with no commentary or anything else next to them looks like unabashed marketing and I don't know what to make of it.) All in all, "Heck" is a fun little exercise for ninety-nine cents (they lowered the price, as far as I can tell, after people complained about it). It doesn't have to be more than that, I suppose, but I was hoping it would be.
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