Since the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, filmmaker Ethan Coen (brother to Joel) has been a writing politically-tinged poems as a blogger for the Huffington Post, penning articles such as “Be Fair!“, “Wasn’t Wanted,” and my personal favorite, “Oh Where Did Your Balls Go, Paul Ryan?” (His bio reads, “Ethan Coen is a totally overrated filmmaker. Sad!”)
On Thursday morning, Coen published a more prosaic post with a novel suggestion: “President Trump, Make Me Poet Laureate!” (h/t Vulture.)
Written in the form of a letter to Trump, Coen makes his case in language that would surely capture the attention of our president. “American poetry should enhance America’s greatness, but let’s be honest, Mr. President: lately the poems have been not so great,” Coen writes. “The Obama poet laureates were, quite frankly, a disaster. Under their leadership, very weak, much American poetry has failed even to rhyme.”
With Trumpian bluster, Coen insists that he would be a much stronger candidate than the current poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, who was born in California to farm workers. He boasts his rhyming skills as “one reason why, when current Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera is deported, I should be considered to replace him.”
The post is obviously satirical, but when a shady businessman/ reality-TV star is elected president, all bets are off. Remember when we thought the idea of Trump running for president was a funny joke? I do! It was only months ago! So why not Ethan Coen for Poet Laureate? As he writes, “You could do verse!”