On Wednesday, ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld showed off his trademark withering delivery, telling the Washington press corps that the war in Iraq “is not well-known. It was not well-understood. It is complex for people to comprehend.” In 2003, Hart Seely collected the best nuggets of the Pentagon headman’s verbiage as “The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld.” The pieces are reprinted below.
April 2, 2003
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is an accomplished man. Not only is he guiding the war in Iraq, he has been a pilot, a congressman, an ambassador, a businessman, and a civil servant. But few Americans know that he is also a poet.
Until now, the secretary’s poetry has found only a small and skeptical audience: the Pentagon press corps. Every day, Rumsfeld regales reporters with his jazzy, impromptu riffs. Few of them seem to appreciate it.
But we should all be listening. Rumsfeld’s poetry is paradoxical: It uses playful language to address the most somber subjects: war, terrorism, mortality. Much of it is about indirection and evasion: He never faces his subjects head on but weaves away, letting inversions and repetitions confuse and beguile. His work, with its dedication to the fractured rhythms of the plainspoken vernacular, is reminiscent of William Carlos Williams’. Some readers may find that Rumsfeld’s gift for offhand, quotidian pronouncements is as entrancing as Frank O’Hara’s.
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 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!
—June 9, 2001, following European trip
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
Sept. 22, 2003
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is a poet, as many Slate readers know. He is also something of a philosopher, and sometimes he combines his two intellectual hobbies. Here is a selection of recent Rumsfeld verse about the fundamental human question: What is life?
These poems are the exact words of the defense secretary, taken from the official transcripts on the Defense Department’s Web site.
On NATO
You may think it’s something
I ought to know,
But I happen not to.
That’s life.
(July 9, 2003)
On Reporters
If you do something,
Somebody’s not going
To agree with it.
That’s life.
(Feb. 19, 2003)
On the Budget
If you do anything,
Someone’s not going
To like it and
That’s life.
(May 7, 2002)
On Leaks
Look bumpy? Sure.
But you pick up
And go on.
That’s life.
(May 17, 2002)
On Democracy
People elected
Those people to office.
That’s what they think, and
That’s life.
(Feb. 20, 2003)
On People
They’re going to have
Some impact on
What happens in that country
And that’s not wrong.
That’s life.
(Nov. 16, 2001)
On Criticism
It makes it complicated.
Sometimes, it makes
It difficult.
That’s life.
(Sept. 11, 2003)
