The Poetry of Sarah Palin : Recent works by the Republican vice presidential candidate" by Hart Seely at Salon.com,In her brief tenure in the public eye Plain "has chosen to bypass the media filter and speak directly to fans through her intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra.""The poems collected here were compiled verbatim from only three brief interviews. So just imagine the work Sarah Palin could produce over the next four (or eight) years."Here's one:"You Can't Blink"You can't blink.You have to be wiredIn...
Sarah Palin – Time to Tell Us About Your Reading Life
As the evidence mounts, Palin and Company continue their steadfast denial of her involvement in any book banning activities during her tenure as mayor.The New York Times reports that although "witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship."The story goes on:But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase [Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s...
Sarah Palin’s Library Issue is Now a Campaign Issue
The McCain campaign has released a memo addressing the controversy surrounding Sarah Palin's involvement, or lack thereof, in a book banning crusade at the Wasilla Public Library."A vicious smear has spread across liberal outlets and blogs into the mainstream media...This smear is categorically false and has no basis in fact. It is an urban myth — nothing more." says the memo.A response to the memo on Truthdig highlights the fact that "the campaign’s 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin’s mayoral predecessor recalls, “She asked the library how she could go about banning book,” and though...
The Wasilla 90 : An Internet Legend is Born
Woman standing in front of the Wasilla Public Library (1950s)Update: McCain Camp Assails Book-Banning Report as a ‘Smear’ via Truthdig McCain Camp Memo - Smear Machine Rolls On: Governor Palin And Library Books"Ah, the power of the internets.Following an article on the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin in Time Magazine, where mention is made of a conversation Palin had with the library on how one goes about banning books, a list of alleged banned books surfaced as a comment on the blog librarian.net and quickly spread through the book universe. Unfortunately, a few of the titles mentioned where published after...
A New Wave of Political Poetry
It is difficult/to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. -William Carlos WilliamsNeed a little reality check after bearing witness to the madness of the Republican Convention?The newly published anthology of contemporary political poetry, State of the Union : 50 Political Poems, by Wave Books might help.The compilation is edited by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder and features the work of John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Lucille Clifton, CAConrad, Peter Gizzi, James Tate, John Yau, Tao Lin, Eileen Myles, Michael Palmer, Wang Ping, and many others.Heidi Broadhead has a nice...