#10: Poetry

Dana Gioia, who wrote three volumes of poetry before taking his post as the chair of the NEA would be the obvious choice here. Except that he hasn't published any more poetry since joining the Bush administration. 

No, the best representation of poetry in the Bush administration is exemplified by the under-appreciated poems of D.H. Rumsfeld.  This remarkable body of work came to light at the hands of Hart Seely, and published in a slim volume entitled Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

While he occasionally indulges in a sonnet, Mr. Rumsfeld is clearly not a member of Mr. Gioia's New Formalist  school.  Rather offers his visions and insights in various forms of free verse and haiku.  Procuring a copy of this increasingly rare edition may prove difficult, so a few examples follow:

The Barnyard

Where's the barnyard?

I see literally dozens and dozens

And dozens of pieces of intelligence every day.

And if you tool all of those scraps

and looked at them,

The first conclusion you would reach

Is that they don't agree.

And therefore,

One can't know with precision

Until the chase around the yard is over.

On Walking Towards a Wall

If you're walking towards a wall

And you decide you want to go to the opposite wall

The sooner you make the correction

The easier it is.

If you wait until you're right up against the wall,

Then you've got to make a sharp turn.

Needless to Say

Needless to say,

The President is correct.

Whatever it was he said.

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Tomorrow, we will explore the Fiction category.