20 little poetry projects

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
Bush under fire over terror alert

2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
The White House said on Thursday that it will co-operate with congressional investigations.

3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
Some independent observers smell a rat, claiming that the administration knew in advance of the attacks but deliberately took no action to stop them.

4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
The administration reacted touchily to allegations that there is something fishy about its failure to release information about the Phoenix document.

5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
On Wednesday, the White House acknowledged that President Bush had received a warning last summer that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might attempt to hijack a U.S. airliner.

6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
The White House did not want to be put on the defensive with leaks about what the president knew, our correspondent says.

7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
But Mr. Fleischer noted that in the daily flow of intelligence information the president receives, the warning of what appeared to be the threat of a conventional hijacking was not as serious as it appears in retrospect. "We were a peacetime society, and the F.B.I. had a different mission," he said.

8. Use a word (slang?) you've never seen in a poem.
White House officials, however, said vague talk of the threat of potential hijackings was a recurring issue in U.S. intelligence data and cautioned against considering this new information with "post-9/11 thinking."

9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
The C.I.A. warning might also explain why Mr. Bush's aides were so certain that Mr. bin Laden was behind the attacks almost as soon as they happened.

10. Use a piece of talk you've actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don't understand).
"You put all that together, and you've dotted a lot of things, you've closed some circles, but it didn't happen," Shelby, R-Alabama, said. "I think it was a lost opportunity. If you put it all in context, not just the briefing of the president, but the FBI is involved here, and I think they could have done a better job, but they didn't."

11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . ."
"As we have seen the nations of the world really have come together to fight this global scourge of terrorism," Blair said.

12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
"The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9/11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile."

13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in "real life."
Several times [Bush] has told audiences that he is working on solving that problem, and these days he is briefed jointly by the F.B.I and the C.I.A., ensuring that each hears information from the other agency.

14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in yours-truly's mouth.

15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
Graham said the House and Senate intelligence panels soon will hold hearings about various memos and reports, including the Phoenix document.

16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
"Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? These are the things we need to find out."

17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
It was not clear Wednesday evening why the White House waited eight months after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to reveal what Mr. Bush had been told.

18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
"The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake. They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the Commander-in-Chief, too," Bush said.

19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
Asked whether the September 11 attacks might have been averted had the Phoenix document raised more red flags, Graham said, "Well, it might have been if this had been seen in the context of other information, which indicated that there was a potential conspiracy to use commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction."

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an image from earlier in the poem.
"There ought to be a red flag put on transformation programs," Warner said, noting that transformation efforts resemble a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link.