Who is Emily Post-Avant, and What Tickles Her Catastrophe About "Borges, Scary Coins, Spanish Grammar, Homophones"? [By Molly Arden]

"Etiquette and poetry go together like salami and eggs used to before the cholesterol craze. What we need is an authority to adjudicate -- an Emily Post, if you will." -- Noah Herzog

Lo and behold, some wiseacre has taken Herzog's words to heart, though the definition of etiquette appears to have been, er, de-stabilized. Here's a snatch of a recent column featuring a typical exchange between an MFA candidate and Emily on a short story by Argentine author George L. Borges [pictured left, winking]. I myself don't know why Emily gets so worked up about Anthony Madrid's interpretation of the short story in question, which I haven't read but probably will because the intensity of the exchange suggests that the coin designated in the story's title, "The Zahir," symbolically stands for currency, commodities, or what is made of them by Karl Marx, always on the side of the Engels. -- MA

<<<
Dear Emily Post-Avant,

So I know you have written about Anthony Madrid before. I know you think he’s a cool poet. But you’ve also given him the business about a couple of his columns for the Paris Review Daily. I also know you are a big fan of Juan Luis Borges, and I see that Madrid’s latest column, from 11/20/19, focuses on that famous writer of Argentina and of the world. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/11/20/the-most-famous-coin-in-borges/#more-141008 Therefore, I was wondering what you thought of it? Anything you could say?

–Bored MFA Café Fly with Nothing Better to Do than Ask, in Lawrence, Kansas

**

Dear Café Fly with Nothing Better to Do than Ask, in Lawrence, Kansas,

Yes, I believe Anthony Madrid is a frightfully good poet. He also usually writes brilliant pieces for the Paris Review Daily. Not always, and there is no shame in falling short. But this is one of those “not always,” I’m afraid. Let me try to explain.

Mr. Madrid’s piece is about “The Zahir,” a story first published in the legendary 1949 collection El aleph, by Jorge (not Juan, my love) Luis Borges. The story is about a twenty-centavo coin of Argentine mint, dated 1929, one that has been dug into by unknown razors or knives, so that the N and the T in the word “CENTAVO” on the tail face are notched through. The number 2 on the coin, belonging to the “20,” is also notched. These particular notches or incisions are, one presumes, connected to the coin’s strange and wild powers. Thus, the coin is claimed to be a Zahir by Borges, which in Arabic–and in the mystical Sufi tradition in particular—designates an everyday object that assumes talismanic powers.

All sorts of alarming things happen to the innocent people who come into contact with this coin/Zahir, after Borges receives it within his change, at some bar. Borges, in a panic to rid himself of this objet petit a with-event-horizon, spends it later on another drink, because it has begun, he senses, to eat away at his very identity and soul. Thus, in what might be secondarily taken as an allegorical critique of the circulation of capital and its attendant fetishisms (with the minted coin, writes Engels, “The commodity of commodities had been discovered, that which holds all other commodities hidden in itself, the magic power which can change at will…”), he passes on the coin’s infectious spells to unfortunate others. (Nice guy, this “Borges”!). Basically, anyone who comes into contact with the coin/Zahir goes bonkers or dies.

Madrid, with not a little evident Jill Bialosky-like raiding on Wikipedia, I’m afraid, recounts all this. And he then goes on to end his essay in something of a bizarre rush, to too-earnestly proffer a weirdly banal notion about the Christian symbolism he sees behind Borges’s Zahir. Which, unless he means it as a kind of joke, is surprising, for someone as ingenious as he.
>>>

FOR MORE (AND THERE'S PLENTY MORE), CLICK HERE.

Comments

[Kent Johnson]

Dispatches from the Poetry Wars has proudly been hosting Emily Post-Avant for a few years now. During that time, she has written over 60 poetry-advice columns for us (a dozen which were lost forever when we overhauled the site a couple years ago, alas). But you can find over 50 extant pieces by her, nearly all of them badly behaved, by clicking on the Author tab at the top right of the Dispatches home page. Type in her name or find her alphabetically in the 'P's'. She has communicated she plans to answer a letter she received today about appearing at Best American Poetry. I hope she'll be in a good mood about it.

[John Bradley]

Emily has long been a favorite of mine. Her writing often removes my shoes and socks, and I am helpless to stop this though I know each time I read her she is dangerous. She will not like me to say this about her as she is rather shy, but she is the best poetry critic around. Though she finds the words "poetry critic" an insult.

[brian richards]

Who better to cite than Peggy Lee? Leave it to Em.

[Charles Bernstein]

“Note: a comment posted here was fraudulently attributed to Charles Bernstein.”

[Andrés Ajens]

E mil y. Uy.
Esto me recuerda una historia (story) inédita de Borges (que finalmente no entró en Ficciones, por insondables misterios), llamada precisamente "Pessoa". Borges juega ahí, cómo no, con la indecidibilidad del término (Pessoa), entre nadie y el poeta-profeta del V Imperio (portugués). En alguna parte "Pessoa" menciona también el conocido entrevero de Odiseo con Polyphêmos (paradojalmente casi otro Fernando Pessoa; ‘de muchas palabras’). Y concluye con una cita (con la que a su vez concluye la story de Kafka) de "Ante la ley": "Nadie pudiera entrar ya aquí, pues esta entrada era solo para ti. Ahora me voy y la cierro [Ich gehe jetzt und schließe ihn]". Sólo para no cerrar tan expeditamente esta puerta, un par de yapas al "Pessoa" de "Borges". 1. Si le se arruina o se le cae toda ontología a Borges, todo "ser" sin más, comenzado por el "es", ¿qué hay? ¿Nomás una suerte de recaída ante la puerta tecno-orgánica alienígena (see Borg en Star Trek)? 2. Celan y recelan... estos Borg, pero. De qué manera! Y, sin embargo, o acaso justamente por eso, ¿cómo no leer mejor a nadie? ¿En Celan? (Die Niemandsrose (1963), claro, meridiano, austral). [À suivre]

[Kent Johnson]

The comment about Borges and Pessoa, by Andres Ajens, is amazing. If you don't read Spanish, please run it in Google Translate to get the gist of it. And then seek out Borges' story "Pessoa."

[Kent Johnson]

In fact, sorry, that comment by Ajens is pretty Derridean in its play and punning, so Google Translate probably won't work. On another topic, is that an actual comment by Charles Bernstein? It seems too silly to be re.

[Sarah Menefee]

couldn't the guy have just tossed it down the sewer gate and saved us all some mental anguish?

[Andrés Ajens]

Derridean? Mamma mia ! [El adjetivo, cuando no da vida, mata (V. Huidobro), KJ]. And what about this fake comment attributed to Ch. Bernstein? Just more Poe & cia. ? Mamma, but really Mamma mia !

[Kevin Nolan]

Molly Arden's recent shout-out to Emily Post Avant of Poetry Wars is a useful reminder of the serious critical work coming from that particular crater. On this occasion Emily has looked into Anthony Madrid's typological reading of El Zahir and proceeds to distil the Borgesian alchimie du verbe into a suggestive retort: 'thus, in what might be secondarily taken as an allegorical critique of the circulation of capital and its attendant fetishisms (with the minted coin, writes Engels, “The commodity of commodities had been discovered, that which holds all other commodities hidden in itself, the magic power which can change at will…”), he passes on the coin’s infectious spells to unfortunate others. '

Indeed yes, since one aspect of the tale is a critique of the gift relation, or any theory of exchange as mere translation. The forms of circulation in El Zahir are not equivalences, but close to the poisonous transfers characteristic of M.R James (Casting the Runes) , Borges' beloved Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island !) or even H. P Lovecraft (donor and recipient both circumscribed by the contagion of insanity) .

One year after Borges was born Georg Simmel noted that 'the function of money in measuring values does not impose upon it the character of being itself a valuable object', and the remarkable Chilean poet Andres Ajens reminds us, in his comments below , that selfhood (the condition of being everyone and no one) is no mere deconstructive, post-avant carte de visite but is vulnerably rooted in cultures either preterite, unavailable or closely guarded by ritual, defensiveness and secretive disinvestment from the mainstream koine of Euro--American intellectual activism. The 'self consumption' of literary forms (their exchange-ability) may well outlive the infinitude of Reason, but even if the spirit is willing (Nueva refutación del tiempo),the body is not unrecyclable : Cannibal Lecteur---mon semblable , mon frere!!.

Thus Emily, in the space of 30 lines or so of numinous numismatics manages to link the political theology of the banking system to the global financial crisis of our poetries and their unstable concepts of the fiduciary,whose disorders are both social and also societal, pervading state, nation, and community (see Keith Hart: Money in an Unequal World ). The central message of EP-A( God Bless, is that her real name??) is to suggest that (to paraphrase David Graeber)- 'any new, viable ((poetics)) will either have to draw on the accumulated knowledge of feminism, behavioural economics, psychology, and even anthropology ... or once again embrace the notion of emergent levels of complexity—or, most likely, both '( https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/05/against-economics/ )
Reader: can you credit that?

PS

Since we are speaking of supply and of a certain demand, and of the money supply (sometimes known in poetry circles as funding), it is timely as well that the mental wizards of Powerless Contempt, Personal Cappuccino (or whatever it is being called this week), should weigh in,for a consideration. But I can only wonder why,if it's a penny for your thoughts, there's always somebody who needs to get in their two cents' worth?

[Andrés Ajens]

Remarkable, K e vin ! Qué pócima -- de las mejores cepas (wine strains) de Saffron Walden, por lejos. Just that: what's that: Chilean poet (qui, d'ailleurs, rime pas mal avec the Kent's Derridian)? ¿Existe eso? ¿Hay tal? (And, of course, too: American, British, Chinese, French, German, Jewish, Irish poet or poetry, etc., the Best as the Worst, etc.). No fuera solo la cosa o cuestión acerca de algo así como una determinación y/o pertenencia estado-nacional o comunitaria en poesía (que nunca se habrá dado por demás sin más), ni tampoco una mera desestabilización de toda equivalencia entre poesía y ciudadanía sino, también, como tú muy bien dices, mon cher dissemblable, mon cher difrère, the political theology of the banking system to the global financial crisis of our poetries and their unstable concepts of the fiduciary, whose disorders are both social and also societal, p e r v a d i n g state, nation, and community… Lo cual, más claro que agua en aguayo, en effet, no conlleva denegar todo efecto de state, nation, and community, pero. Lo que me recuerda al paso la cosa del don (posible imposible) en poesía, así como ese ejemplar de ese bello artefactual “poema” de J. L. Martínez, “La poesía chilena” (con burocráticos certificados de defunción de Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha y del padre de Martínez), que en alguna inmemorial vuelta por el CCCP habré dejado olvidado en Saffron Walden, y que, acaso, habrá sido una buena pócima para tu boca. ¡Salú!

Ps. By the way, en cuanto al f a k e c o m m e n t a t t r i b u t e d to Ch. Bernstein, en mi anterior post, remarca ahí las invisibles comillas, las orejas de conejo antes que las patas de ganso, meridiano está).

[Kent Johnson]

Anthony Madrid throws some big shade at Emily Post-Avant today (12/11), at Paris Review Daily. It's passive-aggressively brilliant: https://www.theparisreview.org/.../nellie-oleson-cest.../...