A bucolic county in upstate New York appointed a poet laureate. Why was she fired shortly after? | New York

In 1985, just before the poet Esther Cohen, her husband, and two friends bought a house in Greene county, their realtor warned them not to: it was too “wild” and different from what they knew. To Cohen, that sounded ideal; she has lived in the same rent-stabilized Upper West Side apartment since 1973 and loves the city but longed for an escape from her bubble of leftist and liberal Jewish urbanites.

Greene county is 120 miles north of New York City. The birthplace of the Hudson River School of Art, it has waterfalls and majestic views of the river and the Catskill Mountains – the perfect place for a writer to find quiet in the summertime and on other occasions throughout the year.

She made local friends quickly. “I went to the farmer’s wife at the farm stand nearby and said, ‘I want to have a potluck. Will you come and host it with me?’” Cohen said in an interview in her Upper West Side apartment. She’s been hosting big summer potlucks ever since for a “big mix” of neighbors: “Everyone comes who is around. And everyone is welcome.”

In January, Create, a local arts council partly funded by the Greene county legislature, appointed Cohen the county’s first-ever poet laureate. She recalls thinking Greene county, with its overwhelmingly Republican legislature, might not want to be represented by a Jewish transplant from New York City. But she was encouraged by community members to apply and was delighted when she won. She signed an agreement with Create and asked that the ceremony in her honor take place in April, as part of National Poetry Month. As laureate, her job would be to promote poetry in the county and participate in local literary events. She would earn an annual $1,000 honorarium.

Six weeks later Create’s executive director, Stella Yoon, appeared at a 4 March meeting of the Greene county legislature to provide an update on the council’s programming and invite the legislators to the ceremony they were planning for Cohen.

When she was finished, Republican legislator Michael Lanuto said he had some questions about the new poet laureate. In doing a “background check”, he said he had found in Cohen’s social media “the antithesis of what I believe this board stands for”. He cited social media posts about Zohran Mamdani (for) and Donald Trump (against).

In an 3 April letter first reported by the local outlet the Overlook, the legislature informed Create that it was rescinding Cohen’s appointment after finding “reasonably true” allegations that she had promoted “violence on social media”. On 15 April the legislature voted unanimously to strip Cohen of her status as poet laureate.

When Yoon called her to share the legislature’s concerns, Cohen was baffled. A self-described pacifist and beloved writing teacher with many friends in Greene county, she hadn’t intended to promote violence. She found and deleted the posts about the president. The timing surprised her – why now, after they’d sent a contract and planned an event?

She’s disappointed that it didn’t work out, but she’s not mad. “I’ll ask my shrink why I’m not angry,” she joked in an email. “Maybe the reason is that I’m intrinsically hopeful, and hearing from so many supportive strangers was surprising and affirming of what I’ve believed forever (I can’t tell you why) that many people are deeply good.”

Described by one writer as a “[New Yorker cartoonist] Roz Chast character come to life,” Cohen is warm and not remotely self-serious. She has wild, curly hair and wears long, flowing dresses and many bangle bracelets. “One of the only negative comments I saw was from a person who said I looked like Bart Simpson,” she said with a laugh.

She has authored numerous books, including one about Greene county, and sends a daily poem to her Substack subscribers (sample line: “I didn’t realize there were unfunny Jews / until college and Susan Davis”). “Yes, I am a New York stereotype,” she wrote in an email, “and yes I absolutely voted for Zohran and campaigned for him.”

She spent her first years in New York City writing a comic novel about Israelis and Palestinians in Nazareth and working a series of jobs, including as an assistant, or “girl Friday”, as she put it, for Bob Marley’s manager. Eventually she became the executive director of the Bread & Roses Cultural Project at Local 1199, a health and human services union. She loves teaching, particularly, she has said, “non-traditional students: fast-food workers, nail-parlor practitioners, nannies, home-care aides”, and has done so in a range of places, from Manhattanville College to homeless shelters.

In Greene county, Cohen has taught in any place that will have her: libraries and local businesses including, for a time, the now-defunct Slater’s, a supermarket in nearby Cairo, New York. “I said to Bud Slater, ‘Can I teach a writing class in the supermarket?’” she recalled. “They’d say, ‘Chicken is 38 cents a pound, and Esther Cohen is in the bean aisle.’”

Although she sometimes uses it, Cohen says she doesn’t pay much attention to social media. She is, she said, “not very Facebook-y”.

The Guardian hasn’t viewed all of the posts that prompted the county legislature to strip Cohen of her title – she deleted some of them once she understood they had offended people, and no one interviewed for this piece was able to provide screenshots. Nor were they written by her; she says they were Facebook posts she had shared.

What is clear is how they were described by legislator Michael Lanuto at a legislative meeting on 4 March. He began by citing, as he put it, “several posts in support of the so-called democratic socialist in New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who’s really a communist”, without specifying what they said. Then he read aloud: “‘Donald Trump will die from bad health; huge, worldwide celebrations in honor of his death,” one post read. “Democrats will win the House and Senate … and Maga crumbles.’” (He appeared to be reading from a post shared by the US Democratic Socialists Facebook group about predictions for 2026.) Lanuto described another post “of what looks like the president being assassinated with blood dripping down his back”.

Based on a recording of the meeting, Lanuto’s recitation did not elicit much of a visible response in the chamber. Some legislators shifted in their chairs or shook their heads. One cleared his throat; another asked where he could view the posts. Later in the video, legislator Patty Handel refers to Cohen as a “horrible human”. Handel has not returned multiple requests for comment.

“I know we’re in a very polarizing era these days,” said legislator Michael Bulich, who spoke after Lanuto. “We may not know the quality of [Cohen’s] work in terms of literature, poetry, which may be great, but we have to make sure that the guardrails are in place.”

Another legislator added: “People have to know where the boundaries are.” Addressing Yoon, Bulich said: “I hope that when you award these grants to people, there’s nothing political in the art they’re doing, in the theater they’re doing, in any way.”

Cohen said she deleted the anti-Trump posts out of respect for her neighbors’ feelings. She disputes allegations that they promoted violence. “I’m a pacifist,” she said. The pro-Mamdani posts – mostly reposts of favorable articles – stayed. On 2 January, she published on Substack an “inauguration day haiku”: “Zohran Mamdani / became New York’s new mayor / What a New Year’s Day!!!”

Patrick Linger, the chair of the legislature, said in an email that he and at least three other legislators had seen the posts before Cohen took them down. Asked about them, Daryl Legg, one of two Democrats in the 14-person legislature, said: “You should not be wishing harm number one to anybody, but especially to the president of the United States.”

Legg admitted he hadn’t seen the posts: “Honestly, I was told what was on there.” Lanuto, who in July 2024 posted to Instagram an AI image of an angel blessing Trump with various Maga hashtags, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Linger said he believed Cohen had violated the terms of her contract, which prohibits “conduct that would reasonably be expected to bring Create or the Greene county poet laureate program into public disrepute or undermine public trust in the program”.

He also said he’d heard from people “who were against our removing [Cohen] from the position and people who were in favor of our removal”, adding: “The vast majority of those that were against [our decision] were not Greene county residents.”

Asked to connect the Guardian to county residents who supported the legislature’s decision, Linger referred me to a constituent he said had expressed support for the decision. That person did not respond to a request for comment.

Yoon declined to speak on the record, but she referred me to a statement Create issued. It says the poet laureate program is “currently paused” and cites the council’s “core belief” that “freedom of expression is essential and that artists should be evaluated on the merit of their work and their contributions to community life”.

Cohen offered to speak with the county legislators in person, but they turned her down. “They didn’t feel the need to hear from her,” Linger said. “They saw the posts.”

Artistic freedom advocates view the decision within the context of Trump’s campaign to reshape public arts institutions in his image. He has sought to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He has demanded that the Smithsonian Institution promote “American greatness”. He took over the Kennedy Center with the help of those he appointed to its board and the stated goal of rooting out “anti-American propaganda” and has moved to eliminate materials he associates with efforts to promote diversity from public life. Much of this agenda has been taken up by conservative governments at state and local levels.

People see Cohen’s story “as emblematic of the assault on the arts writ large”, said Bjorn Thorstad, founding executive director of the Hudson Valley Writers Residency and a member of the committee Create had convened to select the poet laureate. “Even though it’s only about one poet, even though government has a right to be discerning about its appointees, it’s nevertheless cutting too close to the bone for people who hate to see leadership leverage power against artists and free speech.”

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Cohen has been buoyed by an outpouring of support from friends and well-wishers in, around and far from Greene county.

“I’m a registered Republican,” said Mary Lou Nahas, a Greene county resident who has known Cohen for over 30 years. She didn’t want to weigh in on the legislature’s decision, but emphasized: “I’m sorry it happened. I think Esther’s a wonderful person.”

Michael Velle, a two-time Trump voter who lives in Greene county and has taken a writing class with Cohen every year for several years, defended his teacher. Cohen, he said, “got the poet laureate based on merit and merit alone”. Told that the legislature didn’t want a county representative posting incendiary things, he laughed. “That’s ridiculous … the constitution is a clear example of an incendiary document.”

Cohen has “spent her whole life being an inclusive,” he added. ”She’s not a person who wants to hurt anybody. She just wants freedom in being able to write.”

On 14 March Cohen emailed Republican Sherry True, an acquaintance and one of the legislature’s two women members, to ask for her advice. “I’m a poet not a politician … Is there a way we can all get over this problem and move past the politics?” she wrote. “I have always operated primarily out of love – for all people, whatever they believe. I’m sorry for my Facebook posts. But I do believe we’re every one of us human. We all make mistakes. And we all deserve forgiveness.”

The exchange ended after True said that although she supported Cohen “as a poet”, she would vote to strip her of her post because of “speech that includes the killing of a president”. True did not return requests for comment.

Cohen is most disappointed by what she sees as a missed opportunity to bring the community together. “If I can make this an opportunity for dialogue, which I feel I’ve already started to do, that’s the poem.” she said. She added: “I still love Greene county.”