What I find most appalling about William Shatner’s presentation of Sarah Palin Verbatim is not the implicit satire of poetry that it is, but rather that it is so much better than the poetry, say, we find on Prairie Home Companion. The inchoate argle-bargle of Alaska’s former governor, simpy as found language, is more open-ended – and at times more evocative – than the very best “Good Poems” Lake Woebegon has to offer. Does it help that she comes from the state that puts the real in Surreal?