Startling to read Ron Silliman's encomium for Lisa Jarnot's poem, "Swamp Formalism", dedicated to Donald Rumsfeld, and then to listen to NPR's report on a new cd of "art songs" composed to the text of a tongue-in-cheek but faithful volume of the "poetry of Donald Rumsfeld" (an assemblage of his press conference statements, versified). (I don't recall the name of either compositor or composer, sorry.)

Here is the Jarnot poem:

Swamp Formalism

for Donald Rumsfeld

 

As if they were not men,
amphibious, gill-like, with 
wings, as if they were
sunning on the rocks, in a 
new day, with their flickered
lizard tongues, as if they were
tiny and biting and black,
as if I was a hero or they were,
as if the they and these us that
arrived, out of the same blue
ground bogs, as if from my
bog that I saw the sun and
swam up to the surface, as if
the surface was shining, like a
lizard to embrace, as if the
random pain of lizard heads
on sticks were prettier to eat,
as if I didn’t kill the plants, the
water, and the air, as if the
fruit and the sheep were all
diamond shaped and melted,
allowing in the sun, underground,
crowned, in shadows, in the
main dust, from the self same
main dust spring.