Joining a rare class that includes the late Nora Ephron, Barbra Streisand, and many a college-application-padding high-school student, Ethan Coen is a blogger for the Huffington Post. Beginning with Donald Trump’s inauguration, Coen — contributing under the bio “Ethan Coen is a totally overrated filmmaker. Sad!” — has covered the current administration in verse. Sometimes his poems are resigned (“Trumple do what Trumple does / Trumple be what Trumple was”); sometimes they’re impishly mocking (“There’s cotton candy on his head / And hookers pee on him in bed”); sometimes they seethe with frustration (“Oh where did your balls go, Paul Ryan?”). Universally, they are all art, and they all rhyme, and for that, Ethan Coen would like some credit.
In a new prose piece entitled “President Trump, Make Me Poet Laureate!,” Coen lays out a strong case for his meriting the honor:
American poetry should enhance America’s greatness, but let’s be honest, Mr. President: lately the poems have been not so great. The Obama poet laureates were, quite frankly, a disaster. Under their leadership, very weak, much American poetry has failed even to rhyme. That’s like a chicken dinner failing to have chicken. My poetry, on the other hand, always rhymes — and that’s one reason why, when current Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera is deported, I should be considered to replace him.
Coen also argues that Trump needs him, given that the president’s celebrity support base is a little light on heavy-hitters. Or, to put things less diplomatically, “Mr. President, you need more than Scott Baio.” We’re not sure, though. Given Donald Trump’s penchant for poetic language, might he just choose himself?
