After George Bush’s Rose Garden hissy fit, in which he declared that he would simply stop interrogating suspected terrorists unless he could torture them, John “I Only Flip-Flop On Matters of Deep Principle” McCain and the other so-called “Senate rebels” have capitulated to the unpopular president’s petulant demands.

I will be on the road for the next few days, so posting might be light. In lieu of more current events, I thought I might offer these pieces for what they’re worth. These are poems that in some way, either directly or most often metaphorically, speak to some of the issues addressed on this blog. Or so it seems to me. Some were written recently, some long ago. They were written according to the principle once inscribed by Thomas Hardy at the front of one his poetry collections: “The pieces are in a large degree dramatic