Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld

[desdemona]

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, Put to Music

CD Features Songs Based on Defense Secretary's Statements

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and Other Fresh American Art Songs

March 12, 2004 -- Last year, Donald Rumsfeld's pronouncements from Pentagon briefings and media interviews were arranged into poems. Now those poems have been put to music.

Columnist Hart Seely put the defense secretary's words to poetry in the book "Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld." One poem, "The Unknown," was based on one of Rumsfeld's most famous phrasings: "There are known knowns. There are things we know we know..." (See the full text below.)

San Francisco-based pianist Bryant Kong put the poems to music in "The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld," issued on his newly formed label, Stuffed Penguin Music.

No, Rumsfeld doesn't sing. That job falls to a soprano.

Kong tells NPR's Renee Montagne that he composed the songs for friend Elender Well, who hardly sounds like the secretary of defense. "Certainly if I knew a tenor or a baritone, then we would have written them for him," Kong says. "Any singer can, as it were, play the Donald Rumsfeld character in a musical."

Below are selected lyrics from "The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld."

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.

Department of Defense news briefing

Feb. 12, 2002

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.

Interview with The New York Times

May 16, 2001

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.

Department of Defense briefing

Feb. 28, 2003

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!

click on the link to listen with real player or windows media player

http://www.hws.edu/news/update/showwebclip...?webclipid=1344

[cjules13]

Old Don has been under the microscope lately... Almost seems like he's one of the main puppeteers behind Bush and he the real imperialist of them all.

He's one sketchy mofo.

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.

Department of Defense news briefing

Feb. 12, 2002

I remember reading that one... hysterical. Didn't he win the foot in mouth award for that?

[Shawn]

Yeah that's the one.

I think both of these ideas, the poetry and setting it to music, were brilliant. :good job:

Too bad they went with a soprano.

[Redneck4sure]

Too bad they went with a soprano.

4sure

[Ken]

That's why he's called Dumsfeld.

IQ of 7, and a one track mind.

Never changing, never thinking.

Just stuck in an endless loop of mental vomit..............yeah, that about sums up the current administration.