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 wasâ€); sometimes they’re impishly mocking (“There’s cotton candy on his head / And hookers pee on him in bedâ€); sometimes they seethe with frustration (“Oh where did your balls go, Paul Ryan?â€). 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?