A realization just hit me like the explosion of a roman candle firing across the sky: Sarah Palin isn’t inarticulate; she’s a beat-style poet, extemporaneously constructing stream-of-consciousness, free-verse works of art during interviews. Consider this poem Palin rattled off in her recent interview with Katie Couric:
This is crisis moment for America,
really the rest of the world also,
looking to see what the impacts will be,
if America were to choose not to shore up what has happened on Wall Street,
because of the ultimate adverse effects on Main Street
(and then how that affects this globalization that we’re a part of in our world)
so the rest of the world really is looking at John McCain:
the leadership that he’s going to provide through this,
and if those provisions in the proposal can be implemented
and make this proposal better–
make it
make more sense
to taxpayers
then again,
John McCain is going to prove his leadership.
Now compare that to the beginning of Howl by Allen Ginsberg:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
Or this quote from the same Sarah Palin interview:
But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the, it’s got to be all about job creation, too: shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track, so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief, for Americans, and trade–we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that more as more opportunity–all those things under the umbrella of job creation, this bailout is a part of that.
And compare that to a quote from On the Road by Jack Kerouac:
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!
You can watch a clip of Palin’s poetic genius below:
