Emily Post-Avant: Her Final Posting for Dispatches– “Postcard from a Dying Poet” 4/9/20
Postcard from a Dying Poet —for my friend, Étienne D’Abattoir Many years ago, about a year before he died, I received a postcard from a…
Emily Post-Avant, on the Presence of Poetical Spookiness in a Time of Plague, 3/19/20
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Me here again. I trust you’re hanging on, (despite your pretty flipped last sortie). Confusing times, yes? So,…
Emily Post-Avant, on the AWP Coronavirus Petri Dish, Privileged White Poets, and Indigenous Dancers, March 12, 2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I recently attended the 2020 AWP conference in San Antonio, Texas, a gathering of writers trying to get rid of their…
Emily Post-Avant on the San Antonio 2020 AWP, Amid the Coronavirus Outbreak, even as a Worse Virus Runs Rampant in the Poetry Field, 3/4/2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I am in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, and I have an urgent question, which is actually a question I…
Emily Post-Avant: After More Mint Juleps than WCW Ever Had at One Sitting, on Matvei Yankelevich’s Exposé regarding the Corporate-State Prize/Grant Grab of the Poetry Field, 2/22/2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Have you been following the series Matvei Yankelevich, co-founder/editor of Ugly Duckling Presse, has been doing at…
Emily Post-Avant: On the Matter of Who Is Presently the Greatest Living Poet of “America,” and Certain Intriguing Rumors that John Ashbery May Have Faked His Death and is Now Hiding in British Columbia, 2/20/2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Here is my question. Now that John Ashbery is not here, who would you say the greatest living American poet is? Harold Bloom…
Emily Post-Avant, 2/3/2020 : On American Dirt, Varieties of Lit-Field Cynicism, and Barbed-Wire Table Centerpieces
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I live in El Paso, where I’m a grad student at UTEP, in Bilingual Education studies. I was accepted to the MFA program…
Emily Post-Avant on Commune Magazine, Rape Charges, and Sending the Bourgeois Family to the Dustbin of History, 1/24/2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Happy New Year from Brooklyn. I’m a Brooklyn DSA-er and I wonder if you’ve heard of the controversy surrounding…
Emily Post-Avant, On Language Poets as Hired Judges for the Official Poetry Prize System, 1/14/2020
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I know Dispatches once described The Yale Younger Poets Award as "the oldest national award in the United States,…
Emily Post-Avant, On Anthony Madrid Throwing Some Dark Shade at Her in the Paris Review Daily, 12/11/19
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Have you seen the latest Paris Review Daily post by Anthony Madrid, whom you gently teased in your post of November…
Emily Post-Avant: On the “After Post-Marxism” Conference at Berkeley, 12/9/19
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I am a first-year English PhD student at UC Berkeley. I was curious whether you’ve heard of the “After Post-Marxism”…
Emily Post-Avant: On an Insulting Remark by Charles Bernstein at Best American Poetry about Kent Johnson, 12/6/2019
Dear Emily Post-Avant, We are a grad student in English at the U of Pennsylvania, so we earnestly request you not reveal our name to anyone,…
Emily Post-Avant: Responds to a Sarcastic Letter from the Leonel Rugama Poetry Dream Brigade, 11/30/2019
Dear Emily Post-Avant, So you see how this works, we hope? The outsiders, the satirists, the rebels, they all get sucked inside the approved…
Emily Post-Avant: On Anthony Madrid, Borges, Scary Coins, Spanish Grammar, Homophones, Religious Semiotics, Fictional Hermeneutics, and Pessoa, 11/21/19
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…
Emily Post-Avant on the Firing of David Fenza, former President of the AWP
Dear Ms. Emily Post-Avant: I am a student at a small Bible college in Iowa where I am learning how to write poetry. I am a bit of a rebel and…
Emily Post-Avant: On the Astro Poets’ Recent Downward Crash through the Glass Ceiling of Stars, 11/5/2019
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Did you see this? A Deal With Airbnb Turned Retrograde for These Astrologers My communist astrologer friends on…
Emily Post-Avant, on the New Waffle House Poet Laureate and Things to Come
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I was just wondering what you thought about the Waffle House chain appointing its own Poet Laureate.…
Emily Post-Avant on Kent Johnson’s Best American Poetry poem at the Best American Poetry, 9/4/2017
Dear Emily Post-Avant, So, Kent Johnson is now whining about never getting a poem into the New American Poetry, or worse, getting a poem of…
Emily Post-Avant, on What One of Her Dispatches Editors Said, 8/14/2019
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Did you see what Kent Johnson, one of the Editors of Dispatches, said about Asian-American poets? May I suggest you…
Emily Post-Avant, 12 August 2019 [On the Bob Hicok vs. Timothy Yu Thing]
Dear Emily Post-Avant, So you obviously have to say something about the Bob Hicok vs. Timothy Yu thing! Hicok:…
Emily Post-Avant: On the Poet-Laureate Kerfuffle in New Hampshire, 7/22/2019 ** [see update note at end]
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I assume you have seen the news on this Poet Laureate of New Hampshire spat. If not, check this out: Who Gets to Be…
Ms. Emily Post-Avant responds to Kristin Prevallet
Dear Ms. Prevallet, I am writing this with a nine-tab wad of Nicorette in my mouth. It’s like a huge plug of chewing tobacco and tastes about…
Ms. Emily Post-Avant, 1 July 2019 [on the Garrulous Therapists of the Paris Review “Poetry RX” Mental Health Office]
Dear Emily Post-Avant, I’m sure you’ve seen the Paris Review “Poetry RX” column, where various poets take turns playing counselors for people…
Emily Post-Avant, on Frank Sherlock’s Skinhead Past and the New Po-Police Zombies, May 1, 2019
Dear Emily Post-Avant, Me and my friends in the program here at Temple were wondering what your “position” is on Frank Sherlock having been…