Posted on 10/03/2003 9:35:44 PM PDT by Jewels1091
WASHINGTON - Laura Bush says her husband is a poet even if, uh, Americans don't know it.
At a gala Friday night kicking off this weekend's third National Book Festival, Mrs. Bush celebrated the written word in an age of visual media, thanking American authors for their "tales of mystery, history and heroism."
"A good book is like an unreachable itch; you just can't leave it alone," she said at the Library of Congress, repository of 126 million books, recordings, photographs, maps, manuscripts and more.
She revealed that President Bush had penned a poem for her when she got back from a five-day solo trip to Europe, where she attended a book festival in Moscow and visited France - getting two kisses on the hand from French President Jacques Chirac.
"President Bush is a great leader and a husband, but I bet you didn't know he is also quite the poet," she said. "Upon returning home last night from my long trip I found a lovely poem waiting there for me."
As her husband watched quietly, she recited it.
"Roses are red/Violets are blue/Oh my, lump in the bed/How I've missed you."
Bush sometimes refers to his wife as a lump in the bed.
Mrs. Bush went on:
"Roses are redder/Bluer am I/Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy."
And then the finale:
"The dogs and the cat, they missed you too/Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe/The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier/Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier."
Barney the dog had a tumble when Mrs. Bush was handing him to her husband on a tarmac.
James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, called Mrs. Bush "first reader of our land" for her work on behalf of literacy and reading. The first lady is a former librarian and teacher, and the book festival is modeled after those she started in Texas when her husband was governor.
"Stories beckon us to toss all the cares in the world - work, even sleep - to read and discover," she said.
Novelist Tom Clancy, Cherokee storyteller Gayle Ross, nonfiction author and novelist Stephen L. Carter, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer and actress Julie Andrews, who writes children's books, joined Mrs. Bush in launching the festival.
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Appropriate for public dissemination???
If I wrote my wife a sappy poem like that and she went public with it...one of us would end up with a black eye before it was over!
(Thanks hoosiermama and Jewels.....funny article!)
(Is it going to be shown on CSpan again?)
Just to give the press a hard time, and the Feminazis (like Ellen Goodman) who gave him a hard time when he called her that a few weeks back??
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