The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way: Poems [Hardcover]

Ethan Coen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2001

From the fabulously creative filmmaker who wrote and produced movies such as Fargo, Barton Fink, and Blood Simple, this is a provocative, revealing, and often hilarious collection of poems that offers insight into an artist who has always pushed the boundaries of his craft.

In his screenplays and short stories, Ethan Coen surprises and delights us with a rich brew of ideas, observations, and perceptions. In his first collection of poems he does much the same. The range of his poems is remarkable–funny, ribald, provocative, sometimes raw, and often touching and profound.

In these poems Coen writes of his childhood, his hopes and dreams, his disappointments, his career in Hollywood, his physically demanding love affair with Mamie Eisenhower, and his decade-long battle with amphetamines that produced some of the lengthier poems in the collection. You will chuckle, nodding with recognition as you turn the pages, perhaps even stopping occasionally to read a poem. Handsomely and durably bound between hard covers, this is a book that will stand up to most readers’ attempts to destroy it.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"The loudest has the final say,/ The wanton win, the rash hold sway,/ The realist's rules of order say/ The drunken driver has the right of way." Coen has proven himself a brilliant and original filmmaker; he is responsible, with his brother Joel, for Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; and Miller's Crossing, to name just a few. He has also published a collection of short stories, Gates of Eden, which received good reviews. So it should come as no surprise that we now have his first collection of poems. Sadly, to call it poetry is to be kind. These are, at best, sophomoric rhymes, bawdy jokes, and off-the-wall nonsense. They are perhaps the equivalent of marginalia or doodles mindlessly jotted at the bottom of film scripts. Observations and reductions that are more fitting to standup comedy, these pieces are often funny but are seldom anything more. Mr. Sands is a boarder who, after setting off a bomb in his room, can no longer knot his tie. "Tale of the Yukon" tries to retell a Jack London tale in four lines. There is the analysis of dreams, a parody of Bukowski, and a few dozen limericks (including a handful of "clean limericks" under the title, "What, Then, Is the Point?"). There is even a "Lament" in which Coen compares his poems honestly to those of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Keats. It is enough to make one look back fondly on Jewel and Suzanne Sommers. Maybe it's I, but I just don't get it. Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Coen follows up the well-received short story collection Gates of Eden (1998) with a volume of poetry. As one might expect of a man who, in collaboration with his brother, Joel, has made some of the most interesting movies of the past 15 years (Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?), the poems are strange, unconventional, and often ridicule the traditional poetic establishment. The collection's highlights are in two-dozen pages worth of unimaginably filthy limericks, the arguably least obscene of which involves a well-endowed rhinoceros making love to a Sherman tank. These are bawdily hilarious, but when Coen leaves their five-line, rhyming structure, he often flounders with awkward rhymes and singsong meters that rouse more cringes than laughs. Oscar Wilde once said that "all bad poetry is sincere," but many of Coen's unabashedly insincere poems prove otherwise. He verifies again that moviemakers and pop singers do well to avoid poetry. But each offering of celebrity poetry brings new readers to verse, which can't be all bad. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (October 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609609467
• ISBN-13: 978-0609609460
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to love his movies to enjoy this!, April 26, 2002

By 

"excession" (Westfield, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way: Poems (Hardcover)

I certainly enjoy classic poetry, but I also enjoy parody and fun poetry. This short book has some absolutely hysterical poems, and many of them parallel the classics. The title poem is actually making a great point about how the reckless people in life force the rest of us to yield to their desires.

The more bizarre/extreme works in the collection might offend some people, but if you have a good sense of humor and don't get upset easily, then you'll certainly enjoy this work.

A quick story: I brought this book into school and passed it around the English department ... almost everyone found a poem to read aloud, and we all had fun discussing them. The consensus favorite was the poem "Reunion," where Coen perfectly hits what goes on at the 10, 20, or 25 year high school reunion. Pick this up and pass it on ... you'll laugh at the least.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last, poetry for us contented lowbrows..., January 31, 2002

By 

"pc25" (Columbus, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way: Poems (Hardcover)

I have never read a book of poetry from cover to cover before...mainly due to induced narcolopsy after the first few pages. It was therefore with some degree of drowsy trepidation that I received this gift from a close friend. I read the first poem, then the next, then the last...and wondered where this guy had been all my reading life.

I found these poems to be surprising, cleverly metered and worded, and very, very funny. I loved "Agent Elegy", a scathingly intimate portait of a Hollywood agent in repose. I laughed out loud over "Churchyard", a collection of cautionary epitaphs, and I completely fell off my chair for "The Hopping Poem", "After Bukowski", and many others. Any book that has a chapter entitled "Clean Limericks--What's the Point, After All?", you gotta like. There's plenty of the other sort as well.

I find the fact that these works are the cast-off thoughts of an author who is accomplished and celebrated in another medium to be nothing short of amazing.

Don't be put off by the highbrows and their sneers...this is truly poetry for us huddled masses of lowbrows yearning for rhymes a little less rarefied. This is a wonderful book!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny, Iconoclastic and Honest Rhyming Poetry for Adults, December 26, 2009

By 

Ben J Korgen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way: Poems (Paperback)

Open-minded adult readers who love rhyming poetry, humor and cutting through facades and baloney to the truth about anything will instantly love this little book. It will keep its owner chuckling, nodding in approval and thinking of giving it to someone as an inexpensive gift.

Those who say whatever they feel like saying and relish the work of writers who do the same will be in their glory reading Coen's poems. Those who favor moderation in speech and writing might have reservations. They don't need to be prudes to feel this way. Some are getting tired of writers who flaunt their "openness" when discussing vaginas, penises, drunkenness and the like. If these poems were part of a movie they would be rated R.

The quality of these poems is highly variable. There is some filler in this collection. The best one by far is "The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way." It is worth the price of the book to read this one and a full third of the others.