A bucolic county in upstate New York appointed a poet laureate. Why was she fired shortly after? (opens in new tab)

Esther Cohen was removed as Greene county’s poet laureate just weeks after the appointment. It’s ‘emblematic of the assault on the arts writ large’, some sayIn 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 e...