I Hope Like Heck

On June 10, 2011, more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin’s emails were released to the public. Discovered among this trove, through the literary sleuthing of editor Michael Solomon, was language that was clearly intended to be poetry. The result is 50 previously unpublished poems by Alaska’s comedic bard.
Writing on everything from moose hunting and beauty pageants to state politics and tanning beds, “I Hope Like Heck” places the Belle of Wasilla in the poetic pantheon of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson and Dr. Seuss.
As Solomon writes in the foreword: “Verse, like America, yearns to be free. Few twenty-first 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.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Solomon is the editor of “ForbesLife.” We was previously an editor at Byliner, “Esquire,” and “The Daily Beast.” His writing has appeared in “Vanity Fair,” “Elle,” “Newsweek,” and “The Guardian” and he has published several books, including the Malcolm Gladwell parody “Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking at All.”
PRAISE FOR “I HOPE LIKE HECK”
Not since Donald Rumsfeld’s “Pieces of Intelligence” has an American politician arrived on the literary scene with such a stunningly unintentional poetic debut. Michael Solomon has done us all, and Sarah Palin, the great service of not looking for deeper meanings in her comments. By so doing, he helps us appreciate them for what they truly are – a random collection of words. —Jacob Weisberg, editor of “Palinisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin”