Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast
Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall
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James Allen Hall and Aaron Smith talk about their favorite poems and poets, interview amazing writers, laugh a lot, gossip, and get real about life and art.
Available episodes
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3 hours ago
True Crime Part 1
The queens play poetry detective in this episode devoted to true crime-inspired poems.
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
You can check out the Killer Psyche podcast here, hosted by retired FBI agent Candice DeLong.
You can read more about Kenneth Patchen as well as some of his poems here. It's worth taking a look at the poem Aaron reads ("The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves") since the visual experience is part of the poem's drama.
You can read the entirety of Browning's The Ring and the Book for free. You can also experience an audio play of the book (serially; start here.)
Check out more poems from Maggie Nelson's Jane: A Murder here. Julia Shiota's piece "The Humanity of True Crime's Victims" (here on the Ploughshares blog) uses Nelson's Jane: A Murder and the subsequent book about the trial, The Red Parts, to discuss the ethics in true crime.
Read Monica Youn's "Stealing the Scream." Read more about the true story behind the poem here and here.
You can listen to recorded calls made by the Golden State Killer here.
Read Linda McCarriston's "To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons" from Eva-Mary.
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Nov 27, 2023
Kiss Kiss
The queens' Kissing Booth is now open! We talk poetic kisses and then read some recent poetry crushes.
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Read more about Rimbaud here, and watch Patti Smith's video about preparing for "Rimbaud Month" here (5min).
To really understand the life & times Akhmatova lived through, watch Semeon Aranovitch's film The Anna Akhmatova File (in Russian with subtitles ~70 min) here.
The actor and singer Jonathan Groff is a spitter and you can read the receipts here.
Watch this video comprising a short bio about Jane Hirshfield and then a videorecording of Hirshfield reading "For What Binds Us."
Watch Tomas Transtromer read his poem "Allegro" (2 min). Read an English translation of "Allegro" here.
Watch Cher perform her song "DJ Play a Christmas Song" on Berlin's Wetten Dass here and at the 2023 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade here.
If you don't know much about Dorothy Parker, here's a great video to get you started.
Here's Mariah Carey saying about J Lo, "I don't know her" here. The unfolding is here.
For more about Louise Glück's essay "The Forbidden" and the shade she casts on Linda McCarriston and Sharon Olds, read on here.
And W i lli am L0g an receipts about shoeshine kits can be had here.
Read William Ward Butler's "I Got that Dog in Me" here & order his chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press here.
Read Gustavo Hernandez's "Summer, You're a Boneyard," picked by Diane Seuss for Poem-A-Day. Buy Flower Grand First from Tide Moon Press here.
Visit Ruth Madievsky's website. Read her poem "In High School" here. Buy Emergency Brake here.
Read Amy Thatcher's poem "Road Kill" here and her poem "Our Lady of Sorrows" here.
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Nov 23, 2023
Cranberry Shade: A Thanksgiving Mess
The queens get stuffed as they rehash Thanksgivings past. No poetry, but this episode does make hilarity rhyme with vulgarity. After all, a Breaking Form Thanksgiving special wouldn't be complete without talk of clitoris, lesbian octogenarians, and Listerine cocktails. Unbuckle your seatbelts and your pants, cuz this is a messy wild ride -- definitely not for the feint of heart!
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Nov 20, 2023
Cher Revises Poetry
Snap out of it! The queens use Cher to revise some poems and the result is ICONIC!
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
You can hear Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read it for yourself here. (The show was taped before LG's untimely death.)
Read "Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Read "Homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton
You can read Alexandra Teague's excellent poem "Language Lessons" here.
Tess Gallagher's "I Stop Writing the Poem" can be found here.
Go here to read Dorothea Lasky's poem "If you can't trust the monitors"
Here's Robert Lowell's poem "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket"
Finally, we mention Hart Crane's poem "Chaplinesque"
Here are two clips from Moonstruck"
Meeting outside the opera
"I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!"
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Nov 13, 2023
The Janes
The queens play "Just Jane!" featuring a jackpot of J. Kenyon and J. Mead poems. James just can't jank a jackdaw but refuses to be jaded.
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). A fifth book, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, appeared in 1996.
Jane Mead was the author of five collections of poetry: The Lord and the General Din of the World (1996), The House of Poured-Out Waters (2001), The Usable Field (2008), Money Money Money Water Water Water (2014), World of Made and Unmade (2016), and To the Wren: Collected and New Poems (2019).
Here are the Kenyon poems we discuss:
Having It Out with Melancholy
Private Beach
Climb
The Shirt
Otherwise
You can listen to Jane Kenyon read "Otherwise" here.
Here are the Kenyon poems we discuss:
The Argument Against Us
The Memory
In the Parking Lot at the Junior College on the Eve of a Presidential Election
Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty
If you need a refresher on Brenda Hillman's "Male Nipples"
Read Amy Thatcher's poem "Road Kill" in SWWIM.
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Nov 6, 2023
Doing Lines
The gorls chop up some gorgeous lines before playing Mean, Queen, or Blue Jean.
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
"It was a time when they were afraid of him" is from Jimmy Santiago Baca's poem "Ancestor"
"An opening to a story should be / unremarkable" is from Catherine Chen's " My Poem Asks to Be Read Right to Left"
"Things happen when you drink too much mescal" is from Moira Egan's "Bar Sonnet # 11"
Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Gitanjali 11" begins: "Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship."
"Crickets are stitching the afternoon" is how Rosanna Warren begins her poem "Boletus"
"Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high" is the start of Patricia Smith's poem "Siblings"
"I will die in Paris, on a rainy day," writes Cesar Vallejo at the beginning of his "Black Stone Lying on a White Stone"
"Monterosa, your body is dead on Avenue A." is from Jack Agueros's "Sonnet for Angelo Monterosa"
"We kept war in the kitchen" is the beginning of Reetika Vazirani's "Dream of the Evil Servant"
"This did not happen" begins Thylias Moss's poem "Did Not Happen"
Watch "10 Things Joseph Sikora Cannot Live Without" from GQ here.
Check out Forbes's list of The Most Comfortable Heels That Consistently Earn Top Reviews
Pattiann Rogers is the author of at least 17 books, including most recently Flickering, just published in April of 2023. Read this interview with her in Lit Hub
The Frank O'Hara line I reference in the game "Queen, Mean, or Blue Jean" is "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed" which you can read here.
For more tea about Virginia Woolf and her paid domestic workers, read this review.
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Oct 30, 2023
Astonishment
The queens put the ass in astonishment & tease out favorite moments in poems.
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*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Read Alicia Ostriker's "Locker-Room Conversation"
Check out Rita Dove's poem "Afer Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed."
Anne Carson's "X. Sex Question" from Autobiography of Red can be read here. Read "The Glass Essay" from Glass, Irony and God here.
Read Mark Doty's poem "With Animals" from My Alexandria. Check out "Days of 1981" here. And go (re)read "Atlantis" here.
You can read Olena Kalytiak Davis's poem “Resolutions In A Parked Car” here. The line "Explain Jesus" is actually a whole stanza unto itself, and it appears in the poem, "I Am Only Now Beginning to Answer Your Letter" from And Her Soul Out of Nothing.
Read "Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa, the final poem in his book Dien CanDau (Wesleyan, 1988).
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Oct 23, 2023
Portals: a Tribute to Maureen Seaton
Aaron and James are joined by special guests to pay tribute to Maureen Seaton.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Read Maureen Seaton's obituary to learn more about her life.
You can read poems & conversations with Maureen in the South Florida Poetry Journal here.
Watch Maureen read poetry for the Alaska Quarterly Live Reading Series (~12 min).
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Oct 16, 2023
Enjambment
The queens leave you breathless in antici....pation with this crafty episode focused on enjambed lines.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Read Susan Mitchell's poem "The Dead" which is indeed in her first book, The Water Inside the Water (Wesleyan, 1983 and reprinted by Harper Perennial, 1994).
Here's the text of "Wake" by Tess Gallagher. You can watch her read the poem and a few others here (she reads "Wake" around the 11:10 mark)
Carl Phillips's poem "The Gods Leaving" is in his book Pastoral (Graywolf, 2002)
For the receipts regarding Miley Cyrus and Vickie Lawrence, or to read more from that interview, go here.
Read the start of Jorie Graham's essay "Some Notes on Silence" which James quotes in the episode.
You can read Andrea Cohen's poem "Ghosting" in the Atlantic if the spirit moves you.
Here's a link to read Jane Mead's "In Need of a World" (from The Lord and the General Din of the World)
Jean Valentine's poem "This Side" appears in her book Little Boat.
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Oct 9, 2023
Hoedown
Get on your spurs & chaps and join our country queens down at the poetry gay bar!
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Watch Miranda Lambert calling out some selfie-takers and the ladies of The View talking about it. And watch her sing "Tin Man" here.
Watch Jennifer L. Knox read "Crushing It" here.
Maybe the most memorable Tammy Wynette reference is this one from Sordid Lives. "He looked just like Tammy....in the early years," one character says about her brother.
"Billy Collins is to good poetry what Kenny G is to Charlie Parker" reads this scathing pan of the poet.
You can watch Richard Howard read from his poems here (~60 min).
Anne Carson is in conversation with Lannan Foundation's Michael Silverblatt here (30 min).
Terrance Hayes
Read B.H. Fairchild's "A Starlit Night" from 32 Poems here.
Read "Chopin in Palma," the Susan Mitchell poem in Best American Poetry 2023 (first published in Harvard Review) here.
Listen to Mark Doty talk all things Whitman (~50 min)
You can watch Frank Bidart read his serial-killer poem "Herbert White" here (~8 min)
Here's an amazing tribute to Lucille Clifton organized by SAG-AFTRA, with readings by Geena Davis, Tantoo Cardinal, Isabella Gomez, Mark St. Cyr, Candace Nicholas Lippman, Max Gail, Nicco Annan; Lynne Thompson; Sidney Clifton; Madeline di Nonno; and Rochelle Rose. (~70 min)
Read Matthew Dickman's poem "Grief."
Here's Susan Mitchell's CV.
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Oct 2, 2023
F*CKSTICK
The queens hypothesize that erotic/love poems must always have one "f*ckstick."
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
We talk about the difficulty of language and words that “shouldn’t” be in poems in Crimes Against Diction, episode 95.
Read “Dick Pics” by Sarah Tsiang.
Read Jack Gilbert’s “Michiko Dead."
Linda Gregg, “Kept Burning and Distant” from The Sacraments of Desire.
Read H.D.'s “Sea Poppies."
Read Sharon Olds's, “The Pope’s Penis”
Read Adrienne Rich's "The Floating Poem" in Twenty-One Love Poems.
Kim Addonizio's poem “Penis Blues” can be read here.
Louise Glück's “The Encounter” can be found here and is from The Triumph of Achilles
Read Emma Lazarus's “Assurance”
We reference Russell Edson's poem “Conjugal” and Mark Strand's “Courtship”
Read Jill Alexander Esbaum's awesomely funny “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica”
Wallace Stevens’s first book of poems is Harmonium, published by Knopf in 1923. A Palm at the End of the Mind is a Selected Poems and a play.
Lynn Melnick's third book of poetry is Refusenik. You can watch Lynn read from it and talk about it with David Ulin of the New York Public Library.
Watch James Hoch talk about Miscreants and the backstory behind "Bobby" here (~17 min mark). You can read the Publisher's Weekly review of Miscreants here.
Donika Kelly’s first book is called Bestiary. Her second book is called *The* Renunciations pub’d by Graywolf.
Watch Lucas Mann read "Conversion" from Matthew Olzmann's book Constellations.
Read Charles Olsen's essay “Projective Verse."
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Sep 25, 2023
Poppers
Get vasodilated with the queens in this episode filled with heady poetry games.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Watch fabulously messy Willam Belli, from RuPaul's Drag Race and host of the popular game "Poppers Slap," review poppers here.
Read this appreciation of Gwendolyn Brooks by Christian Wiman.
Watch Sharon Olds at the National Book Awards 2022 finalist reading (~5 min).
Louise Glück’s most recent book is Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, a 64-page fablesque novella publishedin 2022 by FSG. Read a rev…
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Sep 18, 2023
True and Actual (with Lynn Emanuel / part. 2)
The queens talk bad words and get Sharon Stoned with Lynn Emanuel in part 2 of the interview.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books, including Lynn Emanuel's new one, from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Lynn Emanuel is the author of six books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly—, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It: New and Selected Poems, and most recently Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. She is Profosser Emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
Her work has been featured many times in the Pushcart Prize…
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Sep 11, 2023
Pills, Portraits, Pessoa (with Lynn Emanuel / pt. 1)
The ladies pop a poetry pill with guest Lynn Emanuel in part one of the interview.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Lynn Emanuel is the author of six books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly—, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It: New and Selected Poems, and most recently Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. She is Profosser Emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been featured many times in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry and is inclu…
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Sep 4, 2023
Horrible Men
The divas are telling the truth and shaming some devils in this tea-spilling episode about horrible men with wide readerships.
*Support Breaking Form!*
* Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
* Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
* James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Here's the article that gave us so many receipts.
Claire Dederer's book is Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. You can read a part of the book that was published earlier in The Paris Review.
Adele Morales was Norman Mailer's second wife. She divorced him two years after he stabbed her. Mailer was married six times and had nine children. According…
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Aug 28, 2023
Digging for Poems
Our intrepid pansies talk prompts--but first up it's a scandal of grave proportions.
*Support Breaking Form!*
* Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
* Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
* James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Read this fascinating consideration of Elizabeth Siddal in Lucinda Hawksley's "The Tragedy of Art's Greatest Supermodel" for the BBC. And you can view some of Lizzie Siddal's paintings/drawings here: https://lizziesiddal.com/portal/lizzies-art/
A bit more about Sidda: Shel became an artist in her own right and was the only woman to exhibit at an 1857 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition—t…
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Aug 21, 2023
The In-Between (with Diannely Antigua)
The queens talk music, monsters, and masturbation with Diannely Antigua.
*Support Breaking Form!*
* Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
* Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
* James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative. You can buy Ugly Music by Diannely Antigua by clicking here.
*Diannely Antigu *is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her second poetry collection Good Monster is forthcoming with Copper Canyon Press in 2024. She hosts the podcast Bread &…
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Aug 14, 2023
National Book Award Predictions
The gays gaze into their crystal balls and predict the National Book Awards.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.
Poets mentioned in this episode include:
Watch Gabrielle Bates read for Alaska Quarterly Review here
Watch Kyle Dargan read at the Cork Poetry Festival from Panzer Hertz: A Live Dissection (3:30-24:00)
Watch Timothy Donnelly read his poem "Diet Mountain Dew" with music
Watch Michael Dumanis read his poem "The Empire of Light" here
Watch Meg Fernandes read 4 poems from I Do Everything I'm Told here…
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Aug 7, 2023
Deep Image Poets
Our intrepid hosts talk Deep Image poetics and nearly break into rosebud....er blossom.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling coop.
The word (and journal name) Trobar comes from the Old Catalan verb trobar, from Vulgar Latin tropāre, a verb presumably derived from Latin tropus, of Greek origin—for "to find." It transforms in French to also take on "to invent, to compose" and thus forms the root of "troubador."
Watch Ellen Bass read her poem "Any Common Desolation" (~2 min) or read it for yourself here.
Check out Cola Franze…
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Jul 31, 2023
A Little Bit Alexis
The ladies get a little bit Alexis in this episode that mixes poetry quotes with Alexis Rose quotes from Schitt's Creek.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling coop.
Read reviews of The Wendys on Allison Benis White's website here.
Preorder Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss (out in March 2024) here.
Watch this 2011 reading by Mark Bibbins here (~8 min).
Too Bright to See is Linda Gregg's first book. Aaron references her fourth book, Chosen by the Lion.
If you'd like to read the back story about "Leather and Lace," the song Aaron a…
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Jul 24, 2023
Keeping It 100
The queens swear to tell the hole truth, and nothing butt the truth to commemorate the 100th episode of Breaking Form.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Read Carl Phillips's "As from a Quiver of Arrows." Or see Summit Chakraborty read it here (~3 min).
If you want to know more about Bruce Weigl, check out the Breaking Form Episode "The Impossible." You can also read "Song of Napalm" here or watch Weigl read it here (~3 min).
Ellen Bryant Voigt's newest book is Collected Poems (WW Norton).
The poet Ed Smith took his own life in 2005 at age 48; before that, he published two books, “Fantasyland” and “Tim’s Bunnies” (1988). David Trinidad edited the book “Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith." Trinidad wrote a remembrance of Smith here. And David Ulin wrote a retrospectiv…
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Jul 17, 2023
In Real Time (with Terrance Hayes / pt. 2)
Terrance Hayes talks about fatherhood, witnessing, and getting a D in high school English.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling coop. You can buy Terrance's books from them:
So to Speak: Poems
Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
Twentieth- Century American Poetry is the 2004 guide and reference book published by Christopher MacGowan, a leading scholar on William Carlos Williams.
Read "Looking for Jonathan" by Jon Anderson, the title poem from his 1968 volume, and read more about…
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Jul 10, 2023
Tools vs. Weapons (with Terrance Hayes / pt. 1)
The queens get between the covers with Terrance Hayes ahead of the release of new works of poetry and prose on July 18.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . . in acts of queer survival."
Pre-Order Terrance Hayes's new books, out on July 18.
So to Speak: Poems
Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
Terrance Hayes's essay on Gwendolyn Brooks in Watch Your Language is called "My Gwendolyn Brooks" and you can read it online here. Find Brooks's poem "the mother" online here. It was first published in A Street in Bronzeville in 1945 when Brooks was 28 years old.
In a 2014 interview for the Best American Poetry blog, Ter…
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Jul 3, 2023
Hereditary
The queens bust out their microscopes and examine poetic DNA.
*Support Breaking Form!
*Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. "Romantic Comedy," writes Diane Seuss in her judge's citation, "is a masterpiece of queer self-creation."
Some of the writers discussed include:
Terrance Hayes (who'll join us for the Breaking Form interview next week!), author of So to Speak, which will be out July 18 and is available for pre-order.
Listen to Etheridge Knight read "Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane" & "The Idea Of Ancestry" here (~6 min).
Galway Kinnell reads his poem "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" here (~2 min).
Read more about Herbert Morris here, and read his fabulous poem "Thinking of Darwin" here.
Read Thomas James's title poem "Letter…
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Jun 26, 2023
Shimmering Terror (with Guest Randall Mann)
The queens are joined by Randall Mann to discuss discomfort, cage-dancing, and how to deal.
Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Randall Mann is the author most recently of DEAL: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2023). Read a review of the book published here in On the Seawall. And buy the book from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie bookseller, here.
Randy mentions his poem "In the Beginning" which has an epigraph from Laura Jensen. You can read that poem, and a few others, online here.
Laura Jensen is the author of 3 books. Carnegie Mellon republished her second book, Memory, in 2006. You can read her poem "Heavy Snowfall in a Year Gone Past" here. And check out this reconsideration of Memory in The Rumpus here.
Check out this essay on Gwendolyn Brooks's formalism and her literar…
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Jun 19, 2023
Crimes Against Diction
The queens talk diction, the political history of language, and naked octogenarians.
Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Words that we identify as "forbidden" (in case you want to try to write poem/s with them!): verboten; beautiful; the body; dick; cicada; bougainvillea; filament; "Z was all X"; Dear Reader"; dead deer; soul; panties.
You can hear Plath read her poem “Lady Lazarus” here.
You can read James's poem "Portrait of My Mother as Rosemary Woodhouse" here.
Read CP Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka” (translated by Edmund Keeley) here.
Aaron references an article he's read about why the word "panties" is objectionably sexist. And while it may not be this one from The Atlantic, it's still an awesome read. The author, Sarah Fentem, writes: "I've heard several people refer to the word as…
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Jun 12, 2023
Banned Books
The ladies express what they've got whether you're ready or not in this episode about banned poetry.
Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Read more of the Judy Blume NPR interview on banning books.
To read more about Amanda Gorman’s poem being banned, click here. If you’d like to read more about Daily Salinas, the person who formally complained about Gorman’s poem, who is reported to have links to Proud Boys, go here.
Here and here are the receipts regarding Jericho Brown's rescinded invitation to visit to the Community School of Naples in February 2022.
Matthew Zapruder’s suicide poem was published as the April 18, 2023 Poem-a-Day.
For more about banned poets, visit the website we use from the Academy of American Poets.
On the Golden Girls, Blanche's sister, Charmaine, writes a bo…
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Jun 5, 2023
Summer Fun
The queens get beachy, play f*ck marry kill with a Pulitzer winner, and fabricate some fab poets' drag names.
Support Breaking Form, the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Watch Carl Phillips read from Then the War: and Selected Poems, 2007-2020, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, here (~1 hour).
Poets we mention in this extravaganza include:
Denise Duhamel, Queen for a Day
Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems
David Trinidad, Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera ; Swinging on a Star
Franny Choi, Soft Science
sam sax, Madness
Danez Smith, Homie
You can read a short excerpt of Nin Andrews's The Book of Orgasms at her website here.
Jennifer L. Knox, Crushing It
Camille Guthrie, Diamonds
Michael Dumanis, My Soviet Union
Louise Gluck
You can watch Jorie Graham's book launch for her newest collection, To 2040, online here (~1 hour…
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May 29, 2023
The Impossible
The queens try to say it clearly and make it beautiful, no matter what, in this episode revisiting Bruce Weigl's poem "The Impossible." TW for sexual assault and pedophilia.
If you need resources, for yourself or a loved one, regarding sexual assault and pedophilia/incest, please visit https://www.rainn.org.
Support Breaking Form, the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Born January 27, 1949 (which makes him an Aquarius), Bruce Weigl enlisted in the Army soon after turning 18 and served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He was awarded the Bronze Star. After he came back from the war, he attended Oberlin College, where Franz Wright was his classmate and encouraged Weigl to send his poems to James Wright. JW wrote back, and a line from that letter serves as the epigraph to Weigl's third book, Song of Napalm. The line is: "Out…
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May 22, 2023
Favorite Least Favorite
All tea, no shade: the queens spill their favorite--and least favorite--books from beloved poets. As the great poet said, "If equal affection cannot be..." etc, etc.
Please support Breaking Form by:
Reviewing Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Buying our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
We mention the following poets and books:
Sharon Olds
Balladz
The Gold Cell
The Dead and the Living
Blood, Tin, Straw
Stag's Leap
Odes
The Unswept Room
*Terrance Hayes
*American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin
Wind in a Box
Lighthead
How to Be Drawn
*Anne Sexton
*Live or Die
Transformations
45 Mercy Street
*Louise Glück
*Firstborn
The Triumph of Achilles
Meadowlands
Ararat. "The Untrustworthy Speaker" that James references appears in Ararat and can be read here.
Averno
Vita Nova; James quotes one of the title poems, "Vita Nova" (read it here).
Watch Louise Glück read with Katie Peterson here (~…
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May 15, 2023
Mercy Mercy: Cherapy
The queens talk poetry through the lyrics of our diva & icon: Cher, who'll turn 77 on May 20.
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Cher appeared twice on the show Will & Grace — once in 2000, when Jack mistook her for a drag-queen Cher impersonator, and again in an appearance in 2002's season 4 finale, where she advises Jack" "Follow your bliss."
Matthew Dickman's poem "Slow Dance" appears in his book All-American Poem, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award. The poem first appeard in The Missouri Review (Volume 29, Number 3, Fall 2006). Read it here. Or watch a video of the poet reading the poem here.
Hear Ann Lauterbachtalk about sound, performance, and folk music through this reading at U Penn's PennSound archive.
Justin Torres does say he learned a lot from reading poetry and says…
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May 8, 2023
Hero Ratio
These queens need a hero, not a zero in this episode of heroic percentages.
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
In the Season 5 Finale of Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) was forced to walk naked through the city. The scene lasts for 6 minutes, not 8 as James says. The nun who follows behind Cersei, ringing a bell and calling out "Shame!" in intervals, is played by Hannah Waddingham. You can get a sense of the scene here. TW for intense misogyny.
Wednesday Addams was played by Christina Ricci in the movies The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). See the lemonade stand scene here and the "I'd pity him" scene here.
Aaron references the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride. Measuring about 8.3 square miles, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp is located between Florin and G…
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May 1, 2023
Hot Takes
This episode's got Aaron sweating, then Miguel Murphy joins the queens for some flaming hot poetry takes.
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.
Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Or, if you'd like to shop indie, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Read a recent Beckian Fritz Goldberg poem. Or listen to her read at the University of Arizona Poetry Center (from In the Badlands of Desire and Never Be the Horse).
Rilke recalled: "I had to wear beautiful long dresses, and until I started school I went about like a little girl. I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll." Speaking of dolls, read Eva-Maria Simms's article "Uncanny Dolls: Images of Death in Rilke and Freud" in New Literary History here.
The Bernadette Mayer book Aaron references is Midwinter Day (New Directions, reissued t…
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Apr 24, 2023
In Brief
The queens get quick (and dirty), summarizing a poet's oeuvre in one sentence.
If you'd like to support Breaking Form, please consider buying Aaron's and James's books (both 2023):
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
When James says that Aaron makes a "Stuck the Landing" flourish, he means the kind of gesture made over and over in this montage of gymnasts sticking the landing!
Watch an Elizabeth Bishop documentary here (including interviews with Bidart, Strand, Howard Moss, Mary McCarthy, and James Merrill). ~56 min.
Watch John Ashbery accept, in delightfully odd fashion, a lifetime achievement award at the 2011 National Book Award here. (~10 min).
Here's a 40-min documentary on Robert Frost that's worth watching.
Watch this interview with Gwendolyn Brooks (~30 min), courtesy of Maryland's Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo).
Listen to this ~2min recording of Jorie Graham rea…
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Apr 17, 2023
HaydenCarRuthStone
The queens discuss how poetry uses us as they highlight the work of Ruth Stone and Hayden Carruth.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Read Ruth Stone's obit in the NY Times.
Phoebe Stone gave a recorded talk about her mother Ruth Stone. It's an audio recording but has a ton of photographs and drafts of Stone's work. It's a personal glimpse into Ruth Stone's life and work. Catch it here (15 min).
Watch the trailer for Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind, Nora Jacobson's documentary on the poet, here. (~3 min).
And you can stream the entire documentary now here (76 min). It includes interviews with family members and friends as well as poets Sharon Olds and Toi Derric…
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Apr 10, 2023
Elegy
Aaron and James stop all the clocks with this episode exploring elegy.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Watch the iconic scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral in which Auden's "Funeral Blues" is read.
Listen to Dylan Thomas read "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" here. A stirring and unforgettable performance of the poem by Michael Sheen is worth your time here.
Listen to Lorca's "Despedida" read here by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Translated as "Farewell," you can read the poem in an English version here. Another is here.
Check out Kathy Fagan's website and online poems here. Buy Bad Hobby here.
Read Robert Cording's poem "Elegy for John, My Student Dead of AIDS" (which Aaron highlights in the show) here.
You can read James L. White's fabulous "Making Love to Myself" here.
The National Institute of Mental Health has a good FAQ abo…
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Apr 3, 2023
Spin the Bottle
Get ready to spin the bottle! The queens cause some jeopardy in this trivia-filled episode.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
And please consider supporting the poets we mention on today's show at your favorite independent bookseller. If you need a suggestion, we can recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC.
Visit Brenda Hillman's website at http://www.brendahillman.net/index.html
Watch this interview with Hillman conducted by Paul Nelson at the Cascadia Poetics Lab in December 2022.
Tracy K. Smith's birthday is April 16, 1972. Life on Mars was published by Graywolf in 2011, and it was the 2012 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. See this great compact interview with Smith on PBS NewsHour here. (~6 min)
In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is a professor of E…
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Mar 27, 2023
John Cranberryman
The queens return to the Poetry Gay Bar and talk mixers & pretty dicks.
f you want to support Breaking Form, please consider buying James and Aaron's new books.
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
See Spencer Reese read "The Upper Room" from The Road to Emmaus here (~3.5 min)
Watch the poet Ai read "The Good Shepherd" here (~3.5 min).
A terrific ee cummings documentary can be seen here (~40 min). Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), often written in all lowercase as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays.
Watch dame Judy Grahn read "I Have Come to Claim" (aka the Marilyn Monroe poem) here (~3:45 min).
Hear Randall Jarrell read from his work at the 92nd Y (no video; ~40 min).
Watch Ruth Stone give a full-length reading (~70 min) here.
W…
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Mar 20, 2023
The Consequences (with Guest Manuel Muñoz)
The queens get fictional with Manuel Muñoz, who joins us to talk about boundaries: between poetry and fiction, between land and desire.
If you want to support Breaking Form, please consider buying James and Aaron's new books.
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Manuel Muñoz is the author most recently of The Consequences, a short story collection published in 2022 by Graywolf. Buy the book here!
And watch to Manuel give a short (~3 min) talk about The Consequences here.
Manuel reads from his story "Compromisos," which you can read in its entirety on Electric Lit here.
See Manuel interviewed on 1 Week Critique about The Consequences here (~45 min).
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Mar 13, 2023
Supporting Actress Smackdown with Guest Manuel Muñoz
The queens get fictional, discussing the poetry equivalents of best supporting actresses with guest Manuel Muñoz.
Kay Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010).
Randall Mann's Deal: New and Selected Poems is currently out from Copper Canyon Press.
Watch Olympia Dukakis's famous "Why do men cheat?" scene in Moonstruck.
When Anne Hathaway accepted the Critics Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2013, she said, “This is a bittersweet moment for me because I have this award, but you spelled my name wrong." She kind of forgot to thank the Broadcast Film Critics Association for the honor. “It is with an ‘e,’” she clarified, adding, “It’s probably in bad taste for me to point that out here.”
Watch Anne Hathaway's cupcake tutorial here.
The movie Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough is a 1975 American romance film, directed by Guy Green, starring Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, David Janssen, George Hamilton,…
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Mar 6, 2023
Romantic Comedy
The ladies talk about James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, and James reads the title poem and talks about sex, survival, and Chicago brides.
Find us at AWP:
*Thursday: *
10:35-11:50 Panel: Building Virtual Community. Rms 440-442, Level 4, Summit Building.
12-12:30 pm Aaron signs STOP LYING at the U of Pittsburgh Press booth # 301 in the book-fair
7pm James reading at Seattle Beer Company
1427 Western Ave
with authors from Four Way Books, Autumn House, and Barrow Street
Saturday:
10:30-11:30 James signs ROMANTIC COMEDY at the Four Way Books booth # 803 in the bookfair.
Buy Aaron's new book, STOP LYING.
Buy James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY.
You can read Lucille Clifton's poem "come celebrate with me" here.
The Bridesmaids blooper reel Aaron references is here (hit the 9-minute mark).
The poem "Pittsburgh" can be found online here.
The poem "Romantic Comedy" can be found online in Bloom's archives here.
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Feb 27, 2023
Pop Poets
Pop off, queen! If poets could be covered by musicians (instead of musicians covering poems), you'd get...POP POETS
Buy STOP LYING, Aaron Smith's new book of poems, just out from the Pitt Poetry Series. Aaron will be signing copies of the book at AWP on Thursday, March 9 from 12:00-12:30 at the University of Pittsburgh Press (Booths 303, 301).
Buy ROMANTIC COMEDY, James's new book of poems, which will be released on March 15. James will be signing copies of the book at AWP on Saturday, March 11 from 10:30-11:30 at the Four Way Books Booth # 803.
Watch Alan's Morrissette read from Rilke's The Book of Hours here. Alanis is definitely a Gemini (June 1). Rilke is her mirror sign (Sagittarius).
Gordon Lightfoot wrote and sang “If You Could Read My Mind." Check out the Ultra Nate version recorded for the 1998 film 54 here.
Watch Rita Dove sing some jazz here.
Watch Lisa Loeb's music video for “Pulling Taffy” here.
You can see kd lang slay “Hallelujah” here.
Watch Dorianne L…
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Feb 20, 2023
The End of Triumph: Breakup Poems with Diane Seuss
The queens talk break-up poetry in a special post-Valentine's Day extravaganza!
You can see Poem 225 (“I’m ‘wife’ – I’ve finished that”) in Dickinson’s handwriting here
Di mentions her essay, “Divine is Mine: Poetry’s Reckless Declarations,” which appears in The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics, edited by Diane Lockward and published in 2018 by Terrapin Books. Take a gander here.
You can read Poem 620 (“Much Madness is divinest Sense —”) here, and see her manuscript version (in her handwriting) here.
You can read Poem 372 (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”) here, and see her manuscript version (in her handwriting) here.
Read Jack Gilbert’s “Failing and Flying” here. And watch Gilbert give a reading (though not from this poem) here.
Read Diane Seuss’s “Love Letter,” originally published in River Mouth Review, here
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Feb 13, 2023
Worm Sh*t: A Valentine's Day Special with Guest Diane Seuss
The queens talk love and sex and worm shit--with extra special guest, Diane Seuss!
Buy Aaron's new book, STOP LYING.
Buy James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY.
Follow Diane Seuss on Twitter at @dlseuss and on Instagram at @dseuss
If you want to sing along with us to Foreigner's “I Want to Know What Love Is” but you don't know the song, you can watch the video here.
Read Camille Dungy’s poem “From the First, the Body Was Dirt” here. Dungy is a Capricorn. You can see her read a few other poems from Tropic Cascade at Split This Rock here.
Read Richard Siken’s poem “Scheherezade” here. Siken in an Aquarius.
Walt Whitman is a Gemini. You can read "We Two Boys Together Clinging" here and "Sometimes With One I Love" here.
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Feb 6, 2023
Poetry Pyramid
The queens play The Poetry Pyramid!
Pyramid is the collective name of a series of American television game shows that has aired several versions domestically and internationally. The original series was The $10,000 Pyramid, and it debuted on March 26, 1973.
You can read Jorie Graham’s poem “San Sepolcro” (the first poem in her second book, Erosion) here.
Read more about Flesh-plastique by Denis Hinrichsen and published by Green Linden Press.
For more about Sally Mann's Body Farm project here. The Body Farm refers to the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee--Knoxville. Read more about the Center here.
Read Dorianne Laux's poem “Trying to Raise the Dead” here, first published in the Spring 1998 edition of Ploughshares.
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Jan 30, 2023
Stop Lying
STOP LYING is Aaron's new book of poetry! We discuss its themes, then James gives Aaron the STOP pop quiz. Stop Lying is just out from the Pitt Poetry Series. Buy it here!
You can watch Aaron read from previous work here
Read Aaron’s “My 1990s” online in Allium.
Watch Phil Levine read the fabulous title poem from What Work Is here (~2 min)
Here’s a video of Britney Spears as a child on Star Search.
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Jan 23, 2023
Endings
The queens show why it matters how you wrap it up.
Support Breaking Form! Buy Aaron's new book, Stop Lying. And pre-order James's new book, Romantic Comedy, available from Four Way Books in March 2023.
Read Robert Hayden's iconic “Those Winter Sundays” here.
Read Sharon Olds’s “I Go Back to May 1937” here
You can read Louise Glück’s poem “Vita Nova” here.
TERF Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck” can be read here.
Read Lucille Clifton’s “why some people be mad at me sometimes” here.
Martha Zweig's poem “Burying the Cat” from Vinegar Bone can be read here.
Threa Almontaser’s website is https://www.threawrites.com. Read her poem “Hidden Bombs in My Coochie” here.
Read Toi Derricotte's poem “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses” here. If you’d like to read more about “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” here’s a great article in the New Yorker where true-crime scholar Jean Murley discusses the history of it.…
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Jan 16, 2023
Survival Is in the Stories (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 2)
The queens learn it takes courage to know what you know in this engrossing interview with the writer Lynn Melnick.
Dolly Parton's version of “I Will Always Love You” attained commercial success, twice reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart — first in June 1974, and again in October 1982, with her re-recording. Whitney Houston’s 1992 version also went to # 1. Parton recorded it again in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill, and that version peaked at # 15.
Read Dolly Parton's 1978 interview with Playboy here.
Watch the 1977 Parton interview with Barbara Walters (RIP) here.
Dolly sang “I Will Always Love You” for the very first time live on the Porter Wagoner Show. Watch that performance here.
Dolly had an impromptu duet, singing IWALY with Kelly Clarkson on Kelly's show. Watch the duet here.
The Southern Gospel Hall of Fame is located in Pigeon Forge, TN.
Watch Dolly Parton perform a rousing rendition of “The Seeker” live here.
Watch here as Brandi Car…
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Jan 9, 2023
Defiant Acts of Joy (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 1)
We talk defiance, joy, and Dolly Parton's closet in Part 1 of our interview with poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick. Buy Lynn's books here!
Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, from the University of Texas Press's American Music Series/Spiegel & Grau Audio (October 2022). She is also the author of three poetry collections, Refusenik(2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books. She co-edited the volume Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Check out her website here.
Dolly Parton starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the movie Rhinestone (1984), a musical based on the 1975 hit song "Rhinestone Cowboy" written by Larry Weiss. Although a critical and financial failure, the film spawned two top 10 country hits for Parton.
Read more about Lucie Brock-Broido on her website here, at the Poetry Foundation h…
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Jan 2, 2023
The Great Unsayable Sex Workshop
Pour your New Year mimosas, cuz we're playing Roethke or Rothko before "Things You can Say in Workshop, and in Bed."
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.
You can read a really terrific profile of Mark Rothko (b. 9/25/03) here.
Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan. Read more about him here or watch this 30-min documentary about his poetry and life.
Another short film made about Roethke (with clips of him reading from poems including : "The Adamant," "My Pappa's Waltz," "Dolor," "Cuttings, later," "The Walking," "The Sloth," "Elegy for Jane," "To An Amorous Woman," "In a Dark Time," "The Abyss," "Light Listened," "A Rouse for Wallace Stevens," "Gob Music," and "Once More for the Road") can be found here.
Text of some of the Roet…
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Dec 26, 2022
Living in Clips
Get your nightcap ready for this recap as the queens relive their favorite clips from a year of Breaking Form.
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.
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Dec 19, 2022
69 (Anniversary)
The Anniversary Episode has the queens recapping interviews and impact from a year of Breaking Form!
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.
Miguel Murphy's most recent book, Shoreditch, can be purchased through Barrow Street.
Buy Denise Duhamel's books, including her most recent book, Second Story, here.
Get David Trinidad's new book, Digging to Wonderland: Memory Pieces, here.
Diane Seuss's Pulitzer-prize-winning book frank: sonnets can be purchased here.
Carl Phillips published two new books this year: Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 is available here; a book of essays called My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing can be ordered here.
Maureen Seaton can be found online here. And you can buy Maureen's books from Loya…
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Dec 12, 2022
Before You Were a Story
Aaron and James talk about becoming storytellers -- and survivors.
Marie Howe’s poem “Gretel, From a Sudden Clearing” was first published in Agni 1987, then in her first book, The Good Thief, selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series (Persea, 1988). The other poem that Aaron mentions from the book is "Isaac."
Watch a reading and conversation with Marie Howe here (~30 min). Poet Sandra Beasley hosts the conversation, which is sponsored by the Howard County (MD) Poetry & Literature Society.
Aaron's poem "After My Mother Apologized for My Childhood, We Went to Brunch" can be read here.
You can pre-order Aaron's book here or directly through the publisher.
You can watch one of the most terrific scenes in Steel Magnolias here. Truvey Jones says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" at the 8:30 mark. Watch the cast of Steel Magnolias interviewed on the Donahue show in 1989 here (~40 min)
You can listen to Ani D…
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Dec 5, 2022
Statements and Questions
The queens get stately in this episode devoted to poetic queries and statements.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention by buying their books at an indie bookstore. We can recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-area bookseller.
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. It's essential reading.
You can read the entire Linda McCarriston poem, “Healing the Mare” here.
Read Chen Chen’s “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” (first published in Pank) here. Chen’s book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (selected by Jericho Brown) and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. Follow him on Twitter @chenchenwrites and visit his official website.
Read “Effort at Speech Between Two People” by Muriel Rukeyser here.
Watch Erika Meitner, Victoria Redel, and Patricia Smith here (~90 min)
Cortney Lama…
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Dec 1, 2022
World AIDS Day: Listening for My Name
Aaron and James read work by writers we've lost to AIDS in this bonus episode.
According to the website for World AIDS Day, more than 38 million people are currently living with HIV. And, since 1984, more than 35 million people have died of HIV or AIDS-related illnesses, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history. Donate here.
Please consider buying the books of the poets we honor! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
We dedicated a Breaking Form Episode ("The Invisible Embrace") to Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995). Monette was the author of 4 novels, 3 books of nonfiction, and 4 books of poems, including a New and Selected Poems called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to AIDS on February 10, 1995.
Read more about Essex Hemphill here, and "American Wedding" (the poem Aaron reads during the show) here. He published 2 chapbooks and 2 books of poetry, and edited the anthology Brother t…
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Nov 28, 2022
Doomsday (with C. Russell Price)
C. Russell Price joins us for the Breaking Form Interview and talks doom, Designing Women, and why you should never read the comments on the internet.
Price is the author of Oh, You Thought This was a Date?!: Apocalypse Poems, which can be purchased from Northwestern University Press here. Their chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other, is available from Sibling Rivalry Press here.
Read here the entire text of How To Stay Politically Active While Fucking The Existential Dread Away (first published in Pank; scroll down).
Watch this short (~7 min) reading by C. Russell while they were a Lambda Literary Fellow.
Read Claudia Rankine’s Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry here. The Academy notes: “This conversation was presented by the Academy of American Poets at the Associated Writing Programs Conference on February 4, 2011. Claudia Rankine began her talk with a reading of Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change." She then presented the following dialogue.”…
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Nov 21, 2022
Personal Anthology
The queens discuss the ICONIC poems that are near and queer to their hearts.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
You can read Carl Phillips's poem, "X," from In the Blood, here.
Listen to Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read the text here.
Read "Satan Says" by Sharon Olds here.
In an October 2022 NY Times profile of Sharon Olds, she declares she has a "real simile brain,” explaining further: “My brain sees in similes.” According to Sam Anderson (who wrote the profile), Olds "has never been comfortable saying definitively, as metaphors do, that something is something else. She ascribes this to her terrifying childhood experience of religion, the idea that blood was wine, that body was bread. To this day, she clings to the comforting distance of that “like.” Blood is like wine, yes; body is like bread, sure — in the same way that a po…
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Nov 14, 2022
Pet Project
Hot goss about Victorian poet(s) Michael Field precedes a conversation about the deep loss of animals, and the intimacy, friendship, and love we share with them.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
We reference a scene from the show Yellowstone where Beth tells her son Carter
the universal truths of getting money. You can watch that clip here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=118&v=a68StSECIGI&feature=emb_logo
Read more criticism and biography about Michael Field here.
Read more poems by Michael Field here.
Links to poems we read during this episode include:
Jane Kenyon's "Biscuit"
Paisley Rekdal's "Once"
Bruce Weigl's "May"
We'll add to this list of other poems about the love we give to and receive from animals here. Suggest some on our social media.
Carl Phillips: "Something to Believe In"
Marie Howe: "Buddy"
Mark Doty: "Golden Retrievals"…
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Nov 7, 2022
Frank Other Frank
Frankly, our dears, all we want is boundless love for Frank O'Hara. We also discuss radical poetic embodiment, and ponder whether or not Dickinson's "Wild Nights" (269) is a fisting poem.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Frank O’Hara was born Francis Russell O'Hara in Baltimore, MD, but grew up near Worcester, MA. As a kid, he studied music in hopes of being a concert pianist. After a stint in the navy (shocking!) he went to Harvard, where Edward Gorey was his roommate. Imagine what those bunk sessions were like.
Watch Jenny Xie read “My Heart” here (~1.5 min).
Read O’Hara’s “Ave Maria” here, and “you will have made the little tykes/ so happy....”
There's a film called "Wild Nights with Emily" (watch a 10 minute clip here), starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson. The film's description says it is informed by Dickinson's private l…
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Oct 31, 2022
Game Day w/ David Trinidad and Denise Duhamel
Just the tip-off! You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll win $50 in breakcoin (more crypto than currency). Polish up your high-heel cleats and get out your pompoms!
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Writing for the Ploughshares blog, Robert Anthony Siegel calls Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book “a progenitor of the fragmentary, nonlinear, hybrid-genre work....” Read the whole, short essay here.
You can watch Elaine Equi read four poems from Big Other here (~4.5 mins). And read more about this fabulous poet’s bio here.
Hear Plath read “November Graveyard” here (~1 min)
Hear Plath read “Poppies in October” here (~1 min)
Plath reads the Rabbit Catcher here (~1.5 min)
Plath reads “The Applicant” here (~2 min)
Watch a beautifully-read, dramatic rendering of “Crossing the Water” here (~1 min)
Audio of Plath reading Lady Lazarus can…
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Oct 24, 2022
Uh-Oh Plutonium!
Uh-oh! The queens dish poetry playboys and punk rock goddesses! It's like an episode of Gossip Girl, but make it poetry....
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, known simply as Lord Byron, was immensely popular during his time. More info about him and his bisexuality can be found here. You can read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage here.
Lord Byron apparently referred to Wordsworth as “Turdsworth.”
Buffering the Vampire Slayer is a Buffy podcast hosted by Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo. Each episode of the podcast also includes a new original song recapping a separate, glorious Buffy episode.
Anne Waldman’s website is http://www.annewaldman.org. She has a new book of essays, interviews, letters, and poems entitled Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2022).
"UH-OH PLUTONIUM!" can be watched, rewatched, and wat…
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Oct 17, 2022
The Invisible Embrace
The queens discuss breaking open the closet doors through the work of Paul Monette.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995) was the author of at least 4 novels: Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978), The Gold Diggers (1979), Afterlife (1990), and Halfway Home (1991). He also wrote Sanctuary, a fable, which was illustrated by Vivienne Flesher and published posthumously in 1997.
His first nonfiction book, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) received a National Book Critic's Circle Award nomination and won a Lambda Literary Award. His second memoir is Becoming a Man; his third book of nonfiction is Last Watch of the Night, published in 1994.
His books of poems are The Carpenter at the Asylum, in 1975; No Witness (1981), and Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (1988). His New and Selected Poems is called West of…
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Oct 10, 2022
Poetry Karaoke
Karaoke may be where the party goes to die, but Poetry Karaoke will give you life!
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Constant Craving is a great song by kd lang. Read Marianne Moore's iconic poem "Poetry" here.
Show You the Shape of My Heart, Backstreet Boys. Watch a fabulous interview with Mona Van Duyn here (~30 min).
You can watch Robert Bly read three of his poems in his writing studio here (~5 min).
Watch Galway Kinnell give a reading and an interview about his influences here (~30 min). You can read his poem "The Bear" here.
Listen to Air Supply's "Sweet Dreams" here.
Here's an interview with Ron Silliman in which he discusses his relationship with Ezra Pound (~5 min).
Watch Kylie Minogue sing "Your Disco Needs You" live at Royal Albert Hall (~4 min). And you can watch the official video for "Into the Blue" here.
Watch Yusef Komunyakaa's ans…
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Oct 3, 2022
De-Collins-izing Emily Dickinson
The shady ladies tackle a misogynistic poem about Emily Dickinson, then consult her tarot for responses. It's Tea, Shade, & Amherst Lemonade, so lace up your gloves and let's get into it!
The offending poem can be read here. For CA Conrad’s takedown of this poem (and some comments by Metres), see this blog post of Phil Metres’s here.
If you haven't read TERFy Adrienne Rich's essay on Dickinson, "Vesuvius at Home," it's worth your time here.
You can purchase the Divining Poets: Dickinson tarot deck here.
For more about the EBay auction of Dickinson's hair and the troublesome history of its possession, read this fascinating and disturbing article in LitHub.
The hair is still on eBay, and going for 450,000 as of this writing.
Amherst College holds the original of the only currently authenticated photograph of Emily Dickinson. The daguerreotype was included in Millicent Todd Bingham's gift of Dickinson material to Amherst College in 1956. Bingham acquired it from Wallace Keep (A…
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Sep 26, 2022
Grief Motel (Pt. 2)
We all have to check in some time to the Grief Motel. The queens talk about grief and how poetry helps us cope.
Please support indie bookshops, like Loyalty Bookstores.
Aaron Smith’s new book, Stop Lying, is out on January 31, 2023 and is available for pre-order here.
You can buy James’s book of personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, here.
Watch *Thom L. Higgins* throw a pie in Anita Bryant's face here. He was one of four activists who disrupted the press conference (held on Oct. 14, 1978). Anita said, “At least it’s a fruit pie,” before she broke down into tears. Her husband immediately joined hands with Anita and said, “Anita, let’s pray for him.” Anita said, “We forgive you and we love you, and father, please deliver him from his demon lifestyle.” The husband said, “I don’t want this man harmed in any way,” and afterwards found found the queer activists out in the parking lot and threw some of the pie in one of their faces too. R…
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Sep 19, 2022
Grief Motel (Pt. 1)
The queens discuss the craft of coping with grief.
James misattributes to Coleridge the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which defines poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." The real author is, of course, Wordsworth, who also writes: "I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind." Read the entire Preface here.
Aaron's book, Stop Lying, is available for pre-order here. It will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press Poetry Series on January 31. 2023.
James's book of lyric personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, is available here.
A terrific depot of mental health resources can be found at Mental Health…
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Sep 15, 2022
The Flame (interview w/ Maureen Seaton pt. 2)
Polish your crystal balls and buckle up, ladies! We get downright divinatory with Maureen Seaton leading the charge.
As always, please consider supporting the poets and writers we mention in the episode and buying indie! Breaking Form recommends Loyalty Booksellers, a Black-owned DC-area indie bookshop. Peruse them here.
Taurus poets mentioned in the Fact Check include Phillis Wheatley, Yannis Ritsos, Robert Browning, Joy Harjo, Natasha Trethewey, Randall Jarrell, Carolyn Forche, William Shakespeare, Jayne Cortez, and Aurelia Plath.
The archetype card deck we used in the podcast is "The Wild Unknown: Archetypes," deck and guidebook by Kim Krans, inpsired by Carl G. Jung. Two others that Maureen uses and recommends are "The Goddess Oracle," by Amy Sophia Marashinsky, illustrated by Hrana Janto; and "Daughters of the Moon Tarot," by Fiona Morgan.
Sylvia Plath’s poem is simply called “Mirror” and it begins, “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions./ Whatever I see I s…
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Sep 12, 2022
Just Keep Going (interview w/ Maureen Seaton pt. 1)
The queens are joined by Empress Maureen Seaton to discuss pushing the envelope....
Buy Maureen's books from Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned indie bookstore.
Maureen Seaton earned an MFA from Vermont College in 1996. She is the author of the more than 25 poetry collections, some of them authored in collaboration with writers like Samuel Ace, Denise Duhamel, and Neil de la Flor. Seaton, Duhamel, and David Trinidad edited an anthology titled Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (2007). Seaton is author of the Lambda Literary Award–winning memoir Sex Talks to Girls (2008), in which she addresses motherhood, sobriety, and sexuality. Her most recent books are Undersea and Genetics, which she published in 2021.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk called “Your Elusive Creative Genius" confirms the story about Ruth Stone visualizing a poem as a sort of weather system. You can hear the whole talk here.
Read a poem by Maureen's teacher Mark Cox here.…
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Sep 5, 2022
When Rita Doves Cry
Dig if you will a picture: Rita Dove, Prince, and an infidel poet.
*Prince* released over 39 of his own albums and won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible (2004). In 1993, Prince announced his desire to go by "an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It's all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency," he wrote in a statement at the time. He was born June 7, 1958 and died April 21, 2016.
Rita Dove was born August 28, 1952. In 1987, she won the Pulitzer in Poetry for Thomas and Beulah (becoming only the 2nd African American to win that award, after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950). She was US Poet Laureate from 1999-2000. Since 1989, she has taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Watch Rita Dove on the PBS News Hour here (~7 min).
Watch Prince in a 1999 appearance on The Larry King Show here (~40 min)
Regarding Judith Butler, her…
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Aug 29, 2022
I Love the Part
Our fearless queens select and dissect favorite poems--to say why and how poems endure.
I Remember is a 1970 memoir written by author and artist Joe Brainard, depicting his childhood in the 1940s and '50s in Oklahoma as well as his life in the '60s and '70s in New York City. Brainard followed I Remember with I Remember More (1972) and More I Remember More (1973), both published by Angel Hair. Read Olivia Laing’s short, fabulous review of Joe Brainard’s book I Remember in The Guardian here. Of it, Laing says, “The Bible aside, I can't think of a more original or lovely book.”
Ada Limon’s poem “The Contract Says We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” appears in Limon’s book The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. You can read the whole poem here.
Hear Terrance Hayes read “Talk” and "The Blue Terrance" at the Folger Library here.
Alexander Pope's sonnet "Sound and Sense" can be read here.
James L. White’s prose poem “A…
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Aug 22, 2022
On Thin Ice (with Jacques J. Rancourt)
The queens spin into a frosty finish with poet and figure-skating stan Jacques J. Rancourt! What a way to celebrate our 50th episode!
Please support the poets mentioned in today's episode by buying their books. Shop indie if you can; we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned bookseller in DC. You can buy Jacques's Brocken Spectre here.
Find Jacques J. Rancourt’s website here. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @jj_rancourt. Read Jacques’s “Golden Gate Park” from Brocken Spectre on Poetry Daily here.
Writing for the Los Angeles Review Erica Charis-Molling says this of Rancourt’s Brocken Spectre: “Much like the phenomenon after which the collection is titled, the search for answers is part ghost hunt and part investigation of an illusion. Through the eyes of these post-AIDS-epidemic poems, we thoughtfully look at the ways the virus is both a thing of the past and very much present.” Read the whole review here.
If you want to know more about what Tonya Harding (who…
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Aug 15, 2022
Big Sonny
The queens defy Big Sonny and play an associative game that leads to a lot of poetry love -- and some hot dish.
Please support the poets we mention in today's show by buying their books! You can shop indie at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned DC-area independent bookseller.
Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself" ends with these lines:
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
{....}
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Mark Doty has a great book on Whitman called What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life (Norton, 2021). In My Alexandria, there is only one “Days of….” poem and it is “Days of 1981,” as James correctly said.
Benjamin Garcia’s Thrown in the Throat was selected for the National Poetry Series by Kazim Ali and published by Milkweed (2020). Read more about Garcia at his website here.
You can learn more about Darnell Arnoult and her fabulous work on her website.
Maggi…
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Aug 8, 2022
Schitt Poetry (Moira Rose Edition)
Poetry & fruit wine, bebè!
We recommend watching episode 6 of season 1, “Wine & Roses.” You’ll remember the experience!
Troye Sivan Mellet is a South African-born Australian singer-songwriter, actor and YouTuber. Watch the official video for Sivan’s song, “Bloom” here. While Aaron cites another music writer’s critique of “Bloom” as a song about bottoming, I prefer this close-reading of the song, written by one Bobby Finger for Jezebel.
Watch Eduardo C. Corral’s reading at the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference—the first reading he gave from Guillotine (~15 minutes).
Read Eleanor Lerman’s poem “The Mystery of Meteors” here.
Mark Bibbins makes use of pop culture in his poems, like this excellent example (“In the Corner of a Room Where You Would Never Look,” first published in the New Yorker).
Watch Maureen Seaton read her poem “Fourth Stage Metaphoric Breast Cancer” here.
You can watch G.C. Waldrep’s hat discuss his latest collection, Earlies…
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Aug 1, 2022
Aaron Awards the Pulitzer
Aaron and James correct history and re-award the Pulitzer Prize. Hindsight is 20/20 and we definitely are hind-oglers.
Support the poets we mention by buying their books. We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie bookseller in the DC area.
Read David Trinidad's dishy and detailed account of how Anne Sexton got her Pulitzer here.
More/other insight into the Pulitzers can be had in reading this July 1957 article by Arthur Mizener that appeared in The Atlantic.
After Forest Gander won the Pulitzer, he gave a 5-book recommended reading list that included C.D. Wright's last book. (Wright and Gander were married; Gander's prizewinning collection Be With is largely elegiac.) You can read his recommendations here.
if you haven't listened to Jericho Brown's interview with the On Being Project, do yourself a favor and listen here. (The interview discusses sexual violence.) Brown won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for his book The Tradition).
Adrienne Rich was a 3-time final…
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Jul 25, 2022
We Can Shift the Canon
Aaron and James revisit Ai's poem "Twenty Year Marriage." The conversation opens up to ideas about education and the violence of white supremacy.
Show Notes:
Ai was born on Oct. 21, 1947. She died on March 20, 2010. She published Cruelty in 1973. Her second book, Killing Floor (1978) was the Lamont selection from the Academy of American Poets. She won the National Book Award for Vice in 1999. She was awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Hear Ai read her poem "The Good Shepherd" here.
Read a tribute to Ai here.
You can read Sharon Olds's "The Pope's Penis" here.
Read "Return to the MFA: A Call for Systemic Change in the Literary Arts" by Namrata Poddar here.
Please support independent bookstores! You can purchase Ai's books as well as books by other poets we mention in the show, at Loyalty Bookstores.
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Jul 18, 2022
(Taylor's Version)
The queens get Swiftian!
As always, please support the writers we mention by buying at indie bookstores. If you need a good one, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned DC-area store.
Catherine Barnett is a Taurus. Watch Nicole Sealey perform Barnett's "Apophasis at the All-Night Rite Aid" here. (~2 min)
You can read Vievee Francis's poem "Say It, Say It Any Way You Can" here.
You can read the title poem of Cathy Linh Che's book, Split, here. The Literary House Press released a broadside of that poem; you can purchase that here.
Visit Yes Yes Books here.
Watch Diannely Antigua read "Diary Entry # 1: Testimony" from her Ugly Music here. (~2 min)
Watch Roger Reeves read his poem "The Book of Commas" at the O, Miami Poetry Festival here. (~4 min)
Watch the fabulosity that is Naomi Shihab Nye (Pisces) read her poem "How Do I Know When a Poem is Finished" here. (~2 min.) Her next book, The Turtle of Michigan, is a novel available from Greenwillow Books as of March 15, 2022…
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Jul 11, 2022
More Moore and Moore
Our hysterical homosexuals pit quotes by Julianne and Marianne Moore, then play a game of fuck, marry, kill: the poetic form edition.
You can read the Marianne Moore poems we reference by clicking on the links below:
"Roses Only"
"Nevertheless"
"In Distrust of Merits"
"Poetry"
"Silence"
Read a small essay by Annie Finch on (as well as Ms. Moore's poem) "What Are Years?" here.
One correction: James gets a word wrong when he quotes Marianne Moore saying, "I have no sympathy for people who find unpopularity embittering," but she says she has "no sympathy with people." The quote is from her Selected Letters.
We reference Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cunningham is a Scorpio and was the first out gay man to win the Pulitzer for Fiction (though many queer writers before him won, they had not publicly acknowledged their queerness).
For readers and writers looking for books on form and craft:
A great resource about the ghazal is Ravis…
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Jul 4, 2022
Theoretically 30
We're 30, dirty, and thriving! The queens name 30 poets for each other, and then we associate a word or phrase with each one. No beeps!
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show by buying their books! We can recommend Loyalty Bookstore, a black-owned DC-based indie bookstore that ships nationally.
Watch Anne Carson read "A Lecture on Corners" here (~58 min)
Marilyn Chin's website is http://www.marilynchin.org
Watch Carolyn Kizer talk poetry and writing with Lucille Clifton, and read her poem "Bitch" here (~30 min)
Find Rachel Zucker online here. Watch Rachel read "Don't Say Anything Beautiful Kiss Me" here (~3.5 min)
James and Aaron are fascinated by Anne Waldman's "Uh-Oh Plutonium," which you can watch here.
Alan Michael Parker can be found online at https://alanmichaelparker.com
Nicole Sealey's website is https://www.nicolesealey.com. Watch her read her poem "Even the Gods" here (~2 min)
Alex Dimitrov's website is https://www.alexdimitrov.com
We mention…
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Jul 1, 2022
Aperture (interview with Carl Phillips pt. 3)
Game day with Carl Phillips, who is gracious enough to play a game called "Apertures."
You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.
You can watch this terrific interview with Carl Phillips by Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles here.
Hear Carl read "Then the War" here (~2 min)
Hear Carl read "Among the Trees" here. Then make sure you send him a fan letter because this essay is freaking BEAUTIFUL.
Read Richie Hofmann's lovely and insightful review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here.
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Jun 30, 2022
Unexpected Kindness (interview with Carl Phillips pt. 2)
Part 2 of our interview with Carl Phillips begins with his reading of "Invasive Species" from Then the War. Then we talk origin, luck, coping, and unexpected kindness.
You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.
Hear Carl read "Among the Trees," a lyric essay from Then the War, here.
Read Richie Hofmann's review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here.
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Jun 27, 2022
Next Step Forward (interview with Carl Phillips pt. 1)
Carl Phillips stops by to talk poetry, survival, harnesses, and censorship.
You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.
You can hear Carl read the title poem from Then the War here (~2 min).
Read Richie Hofmann's review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here.
You can read "All the Love You've Got," the poem banned by the Academy of American Poets here.
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Jun 20, 2022
RuPaul RuPoet
The ladies pay tribute to the Queen of Drag and to the makeup of language!
Consider buying books by authors mentioned in today's episode (and, hey, Aaron's and James's too!) at an independent bookstore. If you need a recommendation, we like Loyalty Bookstore, a Black-owned indie in DC, or The Ivy, a woman-owned indie in Baltimore.
1. For more about jush/zhuzh and its meanings, click here.
2. Watch Fleabag tell the hairdresser that hair is everything! (If you can believe it, we recorded this episode before "Fleabaggots," and if you haven't listened to that episode of Breaking Form, we totally recommend it. It's not hair, but it's pretty close to everything).
3. Read Dickinson's Poem 303 ("The Soul Selects Her Own Society")
4. You can watch the iconic "reading challenge" of the current season of RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars Season 7 here (~5 min).
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Jun 13, 2022
Tear All This Ugly Mess Down Now
Aaron and James revisit Chrystos, Audre Lorde, and Minnie Bruce Pratt--three queer poets who were censored and attacked by Jesse Helm after winning fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Please consider supporting authors and indie bookstores. You can purchase books by the writers we discuss at Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-based independent bookseller.
Chrystos is a Menominee writer and two-spirit activist. Chrystos is a Scorpio. Their books include Not Vanishing, Dream On, In Her I Am, Fugitive Colors, and Fire Power. Read an interview with Chrystos here.
Audre Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. Lorde was an Aquarius. She died of breast cancer in 1992. Her books include The First Cities, Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, New York Head Shop, Coal, Between Our Selves, Hanging Fire, The Black Unicorn, The Cancer Journals, Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power, Chosen Poems: Old and New, Zami: A New Spelling of…
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Jun 9, 2022
Simply Roger (interview with David Trinidad pt. 2)
Tantalize, Memory: Our kiki with David Trinidad continues!
Buy David's new book, Digging to Wonderland, at your favorite indie bookstore -- or buy it here from Loyalty Books, a Black-owned independent bookseller in Washington, DC.
Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act whose memory was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy. You can watch here some footage of her performing an abbreviated (and very clean) version of her famous routine, "The Psychology of a Stripteaser" in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen (~5 min).
John Yau's new book, Joe Brainard: The Art of the Personal, will be released September 2022 from Rizzoli International Publications. For more about Brainard, visit the website dedicated to his work here. A great retrospect about Joe Brainard appeared in Artforum.
Larry Rivers has a great portrait of Frank O'Hara here.
According to this website Roger (1954 - 1982)…
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Jun 6, 2022
Finding Bobby (interview with David Trinidad pt. 1)
We kiki with David Trinidad about memory, desire, and his poem "Finding Bobby."
Order David's new book, Digging to Wonderland, here -- from Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned independent bookstore in DC.
Doriane Laux and Kim Addonizio's The Poet's Companion says this: "David Trinidad, who writes poems about sexuality from a gay man's perspective, does so in very explicit terms," and then they excerpt his poem "Eighteen to Twenty-One." The poem is also anthologized in other books, including High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, edited by Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg, The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou, not to mention in David's book Answer Song, which you should totally buy.
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May 30, 2022
The Real Flip Ditty
Reading is FUNdamental! The queens skewer the filthy fundamentalism of Aaron's youth.
As always, please consider buying books mentioned in the show at an indie bookstore. We recommend Loyalty Books, a Black-owned bookshop in Washington, D.C.
Aaron mentions an underground comic by Justin Green called Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. You can read more about that comic here. If you have about $1,000, you can buy a beautiful hardcover version of it online.
Mill Creek flows generally west-northwest in a winding course through central and western Jackson County, through the city of Ripley, which may have been named for Harry Ripley, a traveling preacher said to have drowned in the creek in 1830.
Justin Bieber's former spiritual advisor, Carl Lentz, was a pastor at the megachurch Hillsong who had a very public downfall.
Watch Melanie Griffith's character in Working Girl say, "I have a head business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?" here.
Troop Beverly Hills…
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May 23, 2022
Odd Jobs
Work, girl! And we give love to our power bottom brethren.
Read Emily Dickinson's Poem 260.
You can listen to it read by Yina Liang, courtesy of the Favorite Poem Project here (~5 min).
Read (or listen) to Richard Blanco's poem "We're Not Going to Malta" here.
Watch Larry Levis read with Phil Levine (~76 minutes; Levis is first). Aaron is right, Levis has a lovely, crisp, deep man-voice.
Read Jane Kenyon's "Having it Out with Melancholy" here. Hear her read "Otherwise" here (video is of her and Donald Hall, walking with their dog). There's an incredible musical response to Jane Kenyon's "Having it Out with Melancholy" that I could not recommend more. Watch/listen here. Composed by Jonathan McNair and performed by The Unheard-of//Ensemble (~22 minutes).
Otherwise is Kenyon's New and Selected Poems. The Collected Poems assembles Kenyon's four previous volumes, plus her posthumous volumes, her translations of Anna Akhmatova, and then four poems never before published in book form.…
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May 20, 2022
The Rainbow Came Back (interview with Diane Seuss pt. 3)
It's Breaking Form Game Day with Diane Seuss!
Buy Di's books at your favorite independent bookstore. We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC.
Apparently, the word "jockstrap" comes from the riders of early bicycles (called penny farthings, which had a huge front wheel and a smaller rear wheel). The riders were called "bicycle jockeys," and they wore athletic supporters called "bicycle jockey straps."
The B52s originally consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards, synth bass), Cindy Wilson (vocals, percussion), Ricky Wilson (guitar), and Keith Strickland (drums, guitar, keyboards). Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related illness in 1985, and Strickland switched from drums to lead guitar. The band also added various members for albums and live performances. In April of 2022, the group announced that they would embark on a final farewell tour, lasting from August 11th to November 11th, 2022. KC and the Sunshine Band will join the grou…
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May 19, 2022
Marginal (interview with Diane Seuss pt. 2)
Margins: Bras, God, Legs, Poetry. Part 2 of our interview with Diane Seuss, 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book of poems, frank: sonnets.
You can purchase frank at The Ivy, a great independent bookstore in Baltimore.
A wonderful essay on Keat's epitaph can be found in The Paris Review here.
For more about still life as it pertains to domestic spaces and women's spaces, check out William Norman Bryson's book Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting.
Rembrandt painted "Still-Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl" around 1639; it is currently exhibited in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, though to view it online visit: https://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.html
If you or a friend need resources regarding assault and/or harassment, we recommend https://www.rainn.org.
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May 16, 2022
The Living World (interview with Diane Seuss pt. 1)
Diane Seuss joins us for the Breaking Form Interview.
Seuss won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for frank: sonnets. Frank also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pen/Voelcker Award, and the LA Times Book Prize. If you haven't read frank yet, you can buy get it from Loyalty Books, a Black-owned independent bookstore.
Her four previous books are It Blows You Hollow (1999); Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010); Four-Legged Girl (2015, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018). She grew up and lives in Michigan.
Di is a Gemini with an Aries rising; her moon is in Sagittarius.
Aaron Smith is a Gemini with a Leo rising; his moon is in Capricorn.
James is a Libra with a Sag rising; their moon is in Cancer.
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May 9, 2022
TIM THOM JESUS JORIE
Poetry, promiscuity, philosophy: maybe you should ask your next question!
Thom Gunn was born on August 29, 1929 and died on April 25, 2004. He was born in Gravesend, England to parents who were both journalists.
Jorie Graham (born May 9, 1950—Taurus) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1996 for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994. Since 1999, she has been Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric at Harvard—and she is the first woman to hold the Boylston professorship. She has received many honors and awards for her work. Her newest book is Runaway (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020). Watch Graham read "Studies in Secrecy" at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival here (under 5 min).
Jesus was born….just kidding!
We mention Jorie Graham's poem "Praying (Attempt of 6 June ’03)" – the one in which the speaker adopts a cat with feline HIV. It was first published in the London Review of Books in January, 2005, and later included in her book Overlord. You can read that…
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May 2, 2022
Reading Shame
Aaron and James talk about giving poetry readings and processing shame.
Please consider buying the books of writers we mention. We like Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC.
Check out Yona Harvey's website here
You can check out the creative nonfiction journal Fourth Genre here.
Watch the interview with Cher on The Letterman Show (around 3:57).
The reference to the "God Warrior" is to Marguerite Perrin, who once appeared on the television reality show Trading Spouses, which selected mothers from extreme opposite families and swapped them with one another—then filmed the fireworks.
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Apr 28, 2022
Celebration (interview w/ Denise Duhamel pt. 2)
The queens explore poetic law and rebellion with Denise Duhamel. Part 2 of their Breaking Form Interview concludes.
Please consider purchasing books by Denise and other poets we mention in this episode at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned DC-area bookstore.
Denise Duhamel's most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). Her collaboration with Julie Marie Wade, The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, was published by Noctuary Press in 2019. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the guest editor is for The Best American Poetry 2013.
The pantoum i…
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Apr 25, 2022
We Were the Ones (interview w/ Denise Duhamel pt. 1)
The queens ask Denise Duhamel's superhero poet origin story in Part One of their interview.
Buy Denise's books at Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned bookstore.
Denise Duhamel was a sociology major in undergrad. Her most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). Her collaboration with Julie Marie Wade, The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, was published by Noctuary Press in 2019. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the guest editor is for The Best American Poetry 2013.
Dangerous Diane is also known as DANGEROUS DIANE SPODAREK. Her webs…
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Apr 18, 2022
Beginnings
Join the queens as they go spelunking in some of their favorite openings.
You can buy books mentioned in the show at Loyalty Books, a Black-owned indie bookstore in Washington, Dc.
Watch Louise Glück read "The Wild Iris" here (~2 min)
A terrific interview between Glück and Peter Streckfus can be found here (they also read together; scroll down for that) (~30 min)
Watch Hanif Abdurraqib read from A Fortune for Your Disaster here (~10 min)
Olena Kalytiak Davis "A Few Words for the Visitor in the Parlor" from And Her Soul Out of Nothing. You can watch Eloisa Amezcua read "The Unbosoming" from OKD's 2nd book, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities. (~3 min)
Watch Jane Mead give a reading at Texas State U here, which begins with the poem Aaron mentions, "Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make" from The Lord and the General Din of the World, here (~40 min)
Listen to Brigit Pegeen Kelly read "Dead Doe" from Song here
Watch an interview with (with in…
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Apr 11, 2022
F*CKFACE
Aaron challenges James to a game of "Elaine Equi or Elaine Benis"; then the boys see what happens when we add one small word to a line of poetry.
Learn more about Elaine Equi's Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems here.
Elaine Equi was nominated for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize International. See her read here.
Read Baudelaire's "Destruction" here.
Learn more about Sappho here.
Mock Orange: Hear Louise Gluck (Taurus 4/22) read it here.
Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Desire" here.
Read Jericho Brown on the form he invented, the duplex, here.
Natasha Trethewey's third book of poetry is Native Guard. You can buy Trethewey's memoir Memorial Drive -- as well as any books authored by the genius writers we've mentioned on today's episode -- can be purchased from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC.
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Apr 4, 2022
Crimes Against Poetry Readings
Our intrepid hosts investigate poetry reading cliches and surmise which poets of the past (and present) would have committed these heinous crimes -- and in broad daylight, too!
Poets we mention include:
1) Read a fabulous essay by Emily Wilson on Sappho here.
2) Many of (Sagittarius) William Blake's artworks can be viewed online through the National Gallery of Victoria here.
3) Catullus's manuscripts are viewable online here; you'll need to be able to read Latin.
4) Aaron references James Wright's "The Sumac in Ohio," which ends:
"Before June begins, the sap and coal smoke and soot from Wheeling steel, wafted down the Ohio by some curious gentleness in the Appalachians, will gather all over the trunk. The skin will turn aside hatchets and knife blades. You cannot even carve a girl's name on the sumac. It is viciously determined to live and die alone, and you can go straight to hell." Wright was a Sagittarius.
5) The poem we reference by Maxine Kumin about wearing the clothes sh…
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Mar 28, 2022
Debbie's Hairy
An episode of literary games and gossip
Are you even gay if you can't differentiate between Debbie Harry, Deborah Digges, and Debora Greger? Are you even a writer if you don't know which poet won 4 Pulitzers?
Loyalty Bookstore, a black-owned bookstore in DC, is a great place to buy books by authors we discussed today.
If you need resources to cope with some mental health struggles, we recommend visiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness: https://www.nami.org/help
Deborah Greger (Leo) does not have a book with the word "animals" in the title. You can read more about this incredible poet here. James's favorite Greger poem is "Head, Perhaps of an Angel" which you can read in New England Review here.
Deborah Digges (Aquarius) wrote poetry and memoir. Read more about her here. Digges’s second memoir, The Stardust Lounge, is a portrait of her younger son, who by the time he was 13 was involved in gangs. The book details how Digges decides to "shadow" him to try to understand him…
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Mar 24, 2022
AWP: Mean Girls (pt. 3)
The AWP Mean Girl Quiz concludes, with a twist at the end!
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Mar 23, 2022
AWP: Mean Girls (pt. 2)
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession is an intimate knowledge of its ugly underside." --James Baldwin
Our AWP Mean Girls Quiz kicks off!
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Mar 21, 2022
AWP: Mean Girls (pt. 1)
Who will rule the school? In the first of three AWP-related episodes, we're recasting "Mean Girls" as poets. Episodes 2 & 3 contain the AWP Mean Girl Quiz that will help you avoid being a Regina George.
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Mar 17, 2022
Saving All My Love for You (interview w/ Miguel Murphy pt. 2)
Miguel Murphy's most recent book is Shoreditch, which you can buy here.
Arthur Hugh Clough is best known, according to the Poetry Foundation, "for his early, shorter poems and for the longer, later work that sprang from his intense religious doubts. He was an important influence on later poets such as T.S. Eliot, and his best work hints at the radical experiments and split subjectivities that would become the hallmarks of Modernism." The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the "long, incomplete poem Dipsychus most fully expresses Clough’s doubts about the social and spiritual developments of his era..." You can read it here.
William Shakespeare wrote plays and poems.
Cormac McCarthy published Suttree in 1979.
Thomas Bernhard's novel Frost was originally published in German in 1963. Michael Hofmann published a translation in 2006.
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. Monsieur Pain was originally published in 1994 under the title La…
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Mar 14, 2022
A Silent Climb (interview w/ Miguel Murphy pt. 1)
Aaron and James interview Miguel Murphy, author of 3 books of poetry who teaches at Santa Monica College. Miguel reads and discusses his poems "A Love Like Auto-Sodomy" and "Greg Louganis." We discuss queer subjectivity and the notion of the reader.
Miguel Murphy's most recent book, Shoreditch, can be purchased through Barrow Street.
You can check out more of his work here.
Or buy his books at Loyalty Bookstore.
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Greg Louganis is an Aquarius and an American Olympic diver. He won gold medals at the 1984 and '88 Summer Olympic Games. He is the only man and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both "the greatest American diver" and "probably the greatest diver in history."
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We reference the title poem of Adrienne Rich's Diving Into the Wreck and you can read that poem here.
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Mar 7, 2022
Banned
What happens when a voice is silenced? Who holds power to account for itself?
Some support & info resources:
The Trevor Project:
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
BIPOC mental health resources:
https://www.thementalhealthcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/BIPOC-Mental-Health-Resources.pdf
National Alliance on Mental Illness: https://www.nami.org/Support-Education
National Mental Health Association (Mental Health America), including phone line & chat:
https://www.mhanational.org/finding-help
Carl Phillips’s poem “All the Love You’ve Got” can be read here.: https://poets.org/poem/all-love-youve-got
Aaron Smith’s poem “Shallow” was published in Allium & can be read here: https://allium.colum.edu/fall-2021-poetry-1/aaron-smith
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Feb 28, 2022
Bad Animals
Is it REALLY good? Or is it merely tongue-in-the-butt good?
Heart's official website is here.
Listen to the vocals-only Heart cover version of "Alone" here. Ann Wilson sings lead; sister Nancy sings backup.
Ann and Nancy's rift formed in 2016. You can read more about it here (CW: physical assault).
You can see Frank Bidart read from Half-Light for the 92nd Y here (~30 min)
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Feb 21, 2022
Phillip These Holes
The Art of Daring to be Flawless: Is it Carl Phillips or Philip Seymour Hoffman? The answer will surprise you!
Buy Carl Phillips's incredible books (including his newest book, Then the War: New and Selected Poems) at Loyalty Books, a terrific Black-owned bookstore in DC.
Carl Phillips Bio:
Born on July 23, 1959 in Everett, Washington, Carl Phillips is the author most recently of Then the War (Feb 1, 2022) and of Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has been a finalist for the National Book Award three times (for Speak Low, The Rest of Love, and From the Devotions) and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for Cortège). His awards include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (for The Tether), the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, induction into the American Academy of A…
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Feb 17, 2022
Fleabaggots
Take The Fleabag Quiz! Can you top James (yes) or Aaron? Plus 901 sex tips for the fleabaggot on the move.
You can read an interview conducted by Tina Fey with Phoebe Waller-Bridge here.
You can watch a clip of Fleabag's stage show here. (~2 min.)
While it appears the stage version of Fleabag is not still available on Amazon Prime in the U.S., here's "Six things to know about the original play."
Watch "73 Questions with Phoebe Waller-Bridge" (Vogue's Q&A series), where she answers questions about the origins of Fleabag, the difference between American and British humor, and her summary of Killing Eve ("murder, murder, HAIR").
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Feb 14, 2022
Don't Play for Safety
The queens revisit Lucille Clifton's poem "won’t you celebrate with me." Then the queens are NOT. HAVING. IT. with misogyny in an Anthony Hecht poem.
Consider supporting and shopping at Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned DC-area independent bookstore.
You can listen to Lucille Clifton read "won't you celebrate with me" here (the text of the poem is available with the audio; ~1 min).
Read more here about The Clifton House. Writers and artists interested in participating and developing Clifton House programs may contact Sidney Clifton at cliftonhousebaltimore@gmail.com
Watch Lucille Clifton read "Sorrows" and "What Haunts Him" at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival (~2.5 min)
The title of the new selected poems is How to Carry Water, Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (American Poets Continuum Series, 180).
Starshine and Clay is Kamilah Aisha Moon's 2nd book from 4Way, published in 2017.
Tracy K. Smith has a great essay on Clifton that appeared in The Paris Review and you can read th…
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Feb 7, 2022
Poetry Gay Bar
You don't have to be good. You just have to be here.
Please remember to shop indie and support poetry! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a great Black-owned bookstore if you are in need. Poets we talk about this episode include:
See Prof. Harryette Mullen read some of her tanka diary poems from Urban Tumbleweed here (~15 minute video).
You can see the fabulous Laura Kasischke read her poem "A is for Almost" here. (~2 min)
Miguel Murphy was interviewed on Breaking Form back in February. Check out Miguel reading with Sandra Lim and Randall Mann here. (~58 min)
C. Dale Young reads at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in this 5-minute clip here.
Lucie Brock-Broido reads her poem “You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World” here. The poem is from Stay, Illusion , which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award.
You can see Randall Mann read his poem "Stalking Points" here. (~2 min)
Frank O'Hara's book is Lunch Poems. You can see cutie patootie Frank read "H…
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Jan 31, 2022
Family Issues
How do you protect your family from your writing, and your writing from your family? The queens get serious about grief, death, homophobia, and family issues. Dear Dr. Freud!
First, some resources:
If you're struggling with LGBTQIA+ mental health issues (or want to be an ally for someone who is), visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness website here. It has great resources!
Another great resource list for queer and trans BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) can be found here.
The Atlantic published an informative essay regarding family estrangement. You can read that here.
If you are grieving a loss, GriefShare can provide some resources and support (including finding others who are going through approximate experiences).
If you want to be an ally for LGBTQIA+ individuals, try:
PFLAG (parents/friends)
GLSEN (educators)
Straight for Equality has some great workplace tips.
them's Trans Voices series on YouTube
This article shares 10 ways to be an ally to Black LGBT peopl…
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Jan 24, 2022
2 Books, 1 Poet
It's the Thunderdome of Poetry: two books (from the same poet) enter. Only one book leaves. We've got the books up on Instagram if you want to play along! @breakingformpod
Buy books authored by the poets we've referred to at Loyalty Books, a terrific Black-owned bookstore.
Check out Ada Limón's website here. The website has the correct publishing order of her fabulous books.
You can view Tracy K. Smith's poem "History" here, in its journal of first publication, Callaloo, Vol. 27, No. 4, Contemporary African-American Poetry: A New Wave (Autumn, 2004), pp. 876-882 (7 pages).
Poet Sun Signs:
Aries:
Ada Limón
Jericho Brown
Tracy K. Smith
Taurus:
Louise Glück.
Jorie Graham
Carolyn Forché
Geminis:
Denise Duhamel
Anne Carson is most likely a Gemini (June 21).
Amy Clampitt
Leos
Carl Phillips
Rita Dove
Mark Doty
John Ashbery
Li-Young Lee
Virgos:
Natalie Diaz
Linda Gregg
Scorpio:
Terrance Hayes
Sharon Olds
Sylvia Plath
Sagittarians:
Lynda Hull
Capricorns
David Sedaris
Dorianne La…
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Jan 20, 2022
Queers of Pop
Pop Culture Thursdays arrive! We discuss Divas, 90s TV, and why Elycia can go f*ck herself.
Anita Baker is an Aquarius.
Gladys Knight is a Gemini.
Gloria Estefan is a Virgo. Gloria remembers the bus accident here.
Bette Middler is a Sagittarius. Siskel and Ebert gave Beaches 2.5 stars, calling it mechanical and sentimental. Watch Middler sing "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today" here.
Cher is a Taurus. Aaron was referencing "not.com.mercial," which showcased Cher's writing and was released through her website. She took the songs to the studio in 1994, but they wouldn't release it (saying it wasn't commercial).
Whitney Houston is a Leo. We reference her performance of "I Loves You, Porgy" along with "And I Am Telling You" plus "I Have Nothing" at the 1994 American Music Awards. Watch that here.
Mariah Carey is an Aries.
Dolly Parton is a Capricorn. See her performance of "Does He Love You" with Reba here.
Adele is a Taurus.
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Dionne Warwick hosted the first season of Solid…
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Jan 17, 2022
Simply the Best
It's time for sexy lit crit, darlings!
As always, buy from indies! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned DC bookstore. Shop here!
Tina Turner (born Nov. 26, 1939—Sagittarius) has sold over 100 MM records, received 12 Grammys, and been inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame twice. She is the 1st Black artist and 1st woman to grace Rolling Stone's cover. Watch her 2005 Kennedy Center Honors (with Oprah, Queen Latifah, Melissa Etheridge, and Beyonce) here. (~20 min)
Ann Peebles wrote and sang the original version of "I Can't Stand the Rain." Listen here.
Watch Camille Rankine read Shepherd's poem "Paradise" here. (-3 min)
Rae Armantrout is an Aries (April 13). Read 11 of her poems here on Granta.
Read Dorianne Laux's "Fast Gas" here.
Watch Eula Biss read from and discuss No Man's Land here (~60 min).
James L. White (b. March 26--Aries) wroteThe Salt Ecstasies (Graywolf, 1982). Read four of White's poems (including "Making Love to Myself," which we reference) here.…
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Jan 10, 2022
Boys on the Side
Head to Head: Louise Glück or Mary-Louise Parker? Aaron gives James quotes and he has to decide who said it. The hosts also share some fabulous Ouisie stories throughout.
As always, please consider supporting authors and indie bookstores. We recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-based bookstore. You can shop their store here.
Dear Mister You, Mary-Louise Parker's book of poems, was reviewed by The New York Times.
Boys on the Side was the last film Herbert Ross directed. It was written by Don Roos and released in 1995. Bonnie Raitt's cover of Roy Orbison's "You Got It" peaked at # 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. You can watch Whoopi and Mary-Louise Park sing "You Got It" to each other in the movie here.
"I want / my heart back/ I want to feel everything again" is from Glück's "Blue Rotunda" from Averno.
"I improvised; I never remembered" is from "Mother and Child" in Glück's The Seven Ages.
Louise Glück's poem "The Untrustworthy Speaker" can be read online here…
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Jan 3, 2022
Mona in the Corner
James and Aaron revisit Reginald Shepherd's poem "The Gods at 2 A.M." Then they play a round of Top, Bottom, Verse where they ponder the erotic styles of poets like Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, and Mona van Duyn.
Reginald Shepherd's blog can be found here. His books are still in print and were all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press (under the fabulous direction of Ed Ochester):
Some Are Drowning (1994; chosen by Carolyn Forchè for the AWP Award in Poetry)
Angel, Interrupted (1996)
Wrong ( 1999)
Otherhood (2003)
Fata Morgana (2007)
Red Clay Weather (2011).
You can read the interview we reference in Callaloo here.
Shepherd held a BA from Bennington College and MFAs from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and from Cornell. He was born on April 10, 1963 and died September 10, 2008. He appeared in four editions of Best American Poetry and in two Pushcart Prize anthologies.
Mona van Duyn was the US Poet Laureate from 1992-1993.
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Dec 27, 2021
What Got Us Through (End-of-the-Year Countdown pt.2)
Top 10 Part 2: James and Aaron continue recounting the top 10 things that got them through 2021. Here's there top 5 faves:
Please support independent bookstores whenever possible. If you need a good one to support, try Loyalty Bookstores.
James's Top 5:
5. Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. Visit the author's website here.
4. Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich, 2019. Winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award and published by Persea Books. Visit the author's website here.
Listen to Cameron Awkward-Rich read "What Returns" here.
3. No Doubt I Will Return a Different Man, Tobias Wray, from Cleveland State University Poetry Center Press, 2021, winner of their 2020 Lighthouse Poetry Series Competition, chosen by Randall Mann. Visit the author's website here.
In the show, James references an episode of Designing Women. You can watch the clip here.
2. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, 2020 John Murillo. Visit the author's website here. You c…
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Dec 27, 2021
What Got Us Through (End-of-the-Year Countdown pt.1)
James and Aaron recount the top 10 things that got them through 2021. In part one, they share 10-6. As always, please consider buying books from the authors we mention (or any others!) from independent bookstores. If you don't have one, we can recommend Loyalty Bookstores: https://www.loyaltybookstores.com
Aaron's 10-6:
10. Hunter Fashion Magazine: Summer of Love Issue 36 SS 2020
You can follow the magazine on Instagram: @hunterfashionmagazine
9. Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends.
Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger
The Cruising Diaries: Expanded Edition by Brontez Purnell and Janelle Hessig
The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers' Award for Fiction, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, a cofounder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School.
Follow Purnell on I…
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Dec 20, 2021
Cherapy
James quizzes Aaron on his literary loves through the song titles of Cher. Then the homosexuals play Knockout: The Contemporary Poets Edition.
Please consider supporting authors and independent bookstores. You can purchase books by authors we discuss at Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned indie bookseller in Washington, DC.
1) Dorianne Laux. The poem we reference in What We Carry is called "The Lovers"
2) Timothy Liu "In the Outhouse" from Burnt Offerings (Copper Canyon, 1995; ISBN 1556591047)
3) Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry (Talisman House, July 1, 2000; ISBN: 1584980060)
4) Marie Howe
5) Cher and the Elephant
6) Tim Dlugos was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. From 1968 to 1970, he was a Christian Brother at LaSalle College in Philadelphia. He left LaSalle and moved to Washington, DC, where he participated in the Mass Transit poetry readings. In the late 1970s, he moved to New York City and was active in the Lower East…
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Dec 20, 2021
Prancing Across the Page
James challenges Aaron to a game of Linda, Linda, Lynda, and we revisit Mark Doty's poem "Homo Will Not Inherit," and we delve into the poetry-world homophobia that Doty's poem critiques.
Buy books by authors we've mentioned at Loyalty Bookstore!
Linda Gregg
Linda Gregg was born on Sept. 9, 1942 (Virgo); she died on March 20, 2019. Her books includeAll of It Singing: New and Selected Poems (2008); In the Middle Distance (2006); Things and Flesh (1999), finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry; Chosen by the Lion (1995); Sacraments of Desire (1992); Alma (1985); and Too Bright to See (1981).
Read "The Lamb" here.
Linda Gregerson was born August 5, 1950 (Leo). She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014, The Selvage (2012), Waterborne (2002), and The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep (1996). As well as a writer, Gregerson is a Renaissance scholar, a classically trained actor, and a devotee of the sciences.
You can rea…
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Dec 20, 2021
First Loves
Aaron and James talk about Poetry Firsts -- first workshops, first journal publications, first poems by which we were awestruck.
Writers discussed include:
John Ashbery
Lucille Clifton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Louise Glück
Barbara Hamby
Irene McKinney
Paul Monette
Maureen Seaton
Gerald Stern
Alice Walker
Journals we discuss include:
Bellingham Review
Ploughshares
The James White Review
You can read Aaron Smith's poem "Fat Ass" here.
According to the foundation named after her, "Helen Steiner Rice . . . is often referred to as the 'poet laureate of inspirational verse.'"
Please consider supporting the authors mentioned during today's episode of Breaking Form--and please think about buying from independent bookstores. If you need a good one, we recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC that ships everywhere.
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Dec 6, 2021
We Are not for Everyone: an Introduction
The queens tells you a little more about what to expect on the podcast and James comes out as a vinyl bottom.
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Nov 27, 2021
Breaking Form Trailer
A preview of our new podcast on poetry and culture. Coming soon.
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