In April, the Greene County Legislature decided to celebrate National Poetry Month in an unusual way. They fired the county’s poet laureate, Esther Cohen. What was the cause? She practiced her First Amendment rights as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
Members of the legislature cited Cohen’s reposting of two anti-Donald Trump tropes on Facebook, one depicting the president dripping with blood, the other predicting worldwide celebrations should he succumb to ill health. Cohen, who called the two posts “satirical,” deleted them as soon as objections arose and wrote a letter apologizing and promising to avoid future political controversy.
Some might argue that Cohen was guilty of nothing more than bad taste, while others might see her reposts as irresponsible, perhaps even disqualifying her from her public office, which pays a mere $1000 per year. Of course, it could equally be argued that Donald Trump’s reposting of a video depicting the Obamas as apes and his celebration of the death of Robert Mueller disqualify him from public office - but he’s the president, after all, so his exercise of the First Amendment does not come into question.
The legislature also appears to have attacked Cohen for her views and fired her for political reasons. According to various news reports, the legislator from Catskill, Michael Lanuto, Jr., called for her dismissal because of her Facebook posts supporting Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, a clear violation of Cohen’s rights, and erroneously proceeded to call the democratically elected mayor “a communist.”
I wonder if it would be more acceptable had the poet laureate praised President Trump, who incited a riot in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and not the candidate of a major political party whom the nation’s largest city chose to lead it. News reports cite another legislator, Thomas Hobart, as calling Cohen “totally unpatriotic” as he unpatriotically endorsed the suppression of her First Amendment rights.
Splitting her time between New York City and Greene County, Cohen has used poetry for decades to bring people together, teaching free workshops, helping build community, and writing an entire book focused on the lives of her upstate neighbors. She actually seemed the ideal person to serve as county poet laureate, and she still is.
As poet laureate of Saratoga Springs, I was appointed to be an ambassador for poetry, and also to write poems commemorating, celebrating, and taking stock of the Saratoga area. I would be remiss in my duties if my poems did not include criticism of what might be improved in our community, our nation, and our world, as well as trumpeting the many things that make them worthy. Saratoga’s mayor and city council understand this, and we share a mutual trust that frees me to write what I must, and what the First Amendment says I can.
The English poet Percy Shelley wrote that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” They imagine the world as it could be while also honestly recording what it is. Poetry will survive when our current generations of poets and legislators alike are long gone, and it will survive because poets convey essential truths about what it is like to be human, and how we can get better at it.
Jay Rogoff is poet laureate of Saratoga Springs, New York. His seven books of poetry include Loving in Truth: New and Selected Poems, from LSU Press.
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