This is brilliant!

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

How did I miss this!? For others out there that may have missed this gem...

"Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld is a 118 page book of 'poems' culled from hour upon hour of footage of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The mastermind behind such a compilation is Hart Seely.

The idea behind this book is as such: Seely sifts thought hours of Rumsfeld and from these briefings, notices that Rumsfeld has something strangely poetic to say underneath all the double-talk and mumbo jumbo. Seely groups the poems into several categories including "Lyrical Poems", "Nine Poems on the Media", "Twelve Sonnets", "Free Verse", "Zen", and "Songs of Myself".

Under the section heading "War is Peace: The Zen Master Poet"

Chasing the Chicken
If you're chasing the chicken
Around the chicken yard
And you don't have him yet,
And the question is, how close are you?
The answer is, it's tough to characterize
Because there's lots of zigs and zags.

(Nov 14, 2001, with editorial board of The New York Times)

In the Red Sea
The Red Sea begins and ends.
And then there's an area
Just Beyond the Red Sea,
And it may very well be
That people chose to do it
Before they get in the Red Sea
Or after they're in there-
Possibly, probably, certainly.

(Dec 9, 2002, to reporters, en route to Eritrea)

Under the section heading "Twelve Sonnets"

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy
off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching
on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

As a matter of fact,
I’m trying to get
a picture of my ranch
And see what it looks like
From two-hundred miles up!

(June 9, 2001, following European trip)

Under the heading "Nine Poems on the Media"

Cheating Woman
She said she had a question
And she asked three.
I asked for an easy one
And she gave me a tough three.

(April 26, 2002, meeting with troops in Kyrgyszstan)

and under the heading "Free Verse"

Central Question
It's awfully hard to know,
In fact, it's impossible to know,
Unless one just speculates.
I don't know how many people
Who live in an exceedingly repressive regime
Actually like it.

(Feb 25, 2003, remarks to the Hoover Institution).

[Elidor]

1. Love it!

Where can I buy it?

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

2. Avalable here

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743255976/qid=1076610034//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-2571350-0089518?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Westegg]

3. Unbelievably GREAT stuff! Ha-ha!!! It's perfect.

Here's a Haiku I'm just fabricating, but I think it captures the genius of Rummy as a poet:

Do I know? I don't.
Might I know in the future?
Yes. It's possible.

[moof]

4. worth another trip to the front page

B.U.M.P.

[jpak]

5. Too freakin' funny!!!

He is cracked!!!!

[Beaker]

6. my FAVOURITE (The Unknown), plus a few more...

from the pages of Slate:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2081042

And so Slate has compiled a collection of Rumsfeld's poems, bringing them to a wider public for the first time. The poems that follow are the exact words of the defense secretary, as taken from the official transcripts on the Defense Department Web site.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Happenings
You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing


BUY THIS BOOK!

[gator_in_Ontario]

7. Please tell me this is not real....

[Sentath]

8. (evil grin) Not only is it real

They are all accurate quotes.

Merely reformatted.

:evilgrin: