Ever since the election, filmmaker Ethan Coen has been amusing himself by contributing sarcastic, anti-Trump poetry to The Huffington Post. Now, Coen has (jokingly) asserted that he’s ready to step up to the big leagues, penning an open letter demanding that Trump name him poet laureate of the United States. “The Obama poet laureates were, quite frankly, a disaster,” Coen writes, pulling a clear, predecessor-bashing page from the Trump playbook. “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—who’s currently finishing up a polish draft on the script for the Scarface remake with his brother Joel, not to mention a TV show they’ve got in the works—is the author of such pieces as “Be Fair!” and “Oh Where Did Your Balls Go, Paul Ryan?” Here’s a sample from the latter: “But then how do you guide yourself, Ryan, / With your conscience-lights all flashing Fail, / And your principles lost! / Would that they were embossed / On your rectum, and you could read braille!” (As Coen notes in his application letter, he makes a point of making sure that his poetry always rhyme.)
You can read Coen’s full letter, including his claims that he’s better than both Scott Baio and Meryl Streep, right here. Meanwhile, there’s still no word on what the next Coen brothers directorial project might be.
