Poehler's messy memoir 'Yes Please' is a no-go

Amy Poehler has an entire chapter in her new book about apologizing. "I say 'sorry' a lot," she writes.

I'm sorry, Amy, I really am.

I like you, and I wanted to like Yes Please (Dey St.).

With a title like that, it's hard to say "no, thanks" to the talented Saturday Night Live alum who stars as Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation, but there you go.

Yes Please is the latest entry in the funny-lady-writes-a-quirky-memoir-and-hopes-for-a-best-seller sweepstakes.

Poehler's pal Tina Fey set the gold standard in 2011 with the sparkling Bossypants, and Girls wunderkind Lena Dunham proved she's no slouch as a writer (and over-sharer) with this fall's Not That Kind of Girl.

But Yes Please gets off to an ominous start with a preface called "Writing Is Hard" in which Poehler tells us about 100 different times and ways that "this book nearly killed me" and that writing is "hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not."

Oy. The reader does not proceed with much confidence after that warning shot.

Yes Please is a mess, a book that (dare I say it in these anything-goes times?) desperately needed an editor and a focus. Poehler can be absolutely hilarious on TV — but where's the funny in Yes Please? MIA.

Nor is the book particularly revealing. We do learn a few things:

- Nick Kroll, her new boyfriend, is "wonderful." Glad to hear it.

- She has the "Angelina Jolie of vaginas." Yuck.

- She has trouble sleeping. Yawn.

- She is a fan of porn. "It can be a very nice accompaniment to an evening of self-pleasure." All righty!

- In her 20s, she tried cocaine. Well, didn't everybody who ever worked at SNL?

Out of fairness, there are times in Yes Please when you remember why you like Poehler. When she talks about how much she loves her two sons. When she refuses to diss her ex-husband, Will Arnett. When she concedes she likes to argue and she's "not as nice as you think I am." When she takes us backstage at SNL with Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Tina Fey and Seth Meyers (who provides a nicely written guest chapter in Yes Please).

Oh yeah. One more "revelation."

- Writing a book is "really, really HARD." (All caps, page 136.)

Sorry, Amy. I'm going to have to say Knope to Yes.

Yes Please

By Amy Poehler

Dey St., 329 pp.

2 stars out of four