Not Giving an Inch in a Battle of Wits and Words
In 2003 the journalist Hart Seeley published “Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld ,” a book that arranged some of the public pronouncements of that secretary of defense into spiky, evocative morsels of free verse . Mr. Rumsfeld may have been an accidental poet, but “The Unknown Known,” Errol Morris’s new documentary about him, nonetheless makes an implicit argument for his literary distinction. Not only does Mr. Rumsfeld revel in his status as the proud and prolific author — via his beloved Dictaphone — of memos known at the Pentagon as “snowflakes,” but he also shows himself to be a man fascinated by language and delighted by his ability to use it. Continue reading the main story RELATED COVERAGE Seeking Truth in a Blizzard of ‘Snowflakes’ MARCH 28, 2014 With Mr. Morris’s off-camera encouragement, Mr. Rumsfeld, voluble and energetic in his early 80s, reads aloud from a dozen or so of his most memorable snowflakes. (He guesses that he com