#poetry

Get ready to unlock your box with the Breaking Form queens as they discuss Sharon Olds's icon poem, "Satan Says"

Read the text of "Satan Says" here.

Check out the wild facts about Valerie Bertinelli on her IMDB page!

Read Sharon Olds's poem, "I Go Back to May 1937"

Here's a famous "Church Chat" sketch with Dana Carvey as Enid Strict, aka the Church Lady, with guests Jim and Tammy Faye Baker (played by Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks).

And, lastly, check out Aaron Smith's short essay "The Very Act of Telling" here.  

Join the gals for the queer makeover you secretly knew straight cis guy poetry needed.

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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.

The word  zhuzh  is part of Polari, an argot used in Britain since perhaps the 18th century, primarily among gay theatrical and circus performers. Given the lack of a clear origin, it is impossible to tell if the verb has priority over the noun or vice versa.

Jai Rodriguez was the original Culture Vulture for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Follow him on Instagram @jairodriguez or check out his IMDB page here.

Read Charles Wright's poem " Sitting at Night on the Front Porch." In 2015, Charles Wright gave an interview with the Yale News in which he said that writing is "very difficult now, because I’ve probably written all the things I could possibly have to say at least five times, in five different directions. I don’t want to do it now." He also talks about it in this interview with Image.

Read the poem of Charles Simic's that we discuss in the episode: "My Shoes." You can also read the poem Aaron references: "Fork."

Read W.S. Merwin's poem "Language."

In every symptom is a seed of power, ladies! Diane Seuss joins to talk Adrienne Rich and Gwendolyn Brooks.

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.
      Diane's MODERN POETRY is available March 5, 2024 from Graywolf Press.

Read Adrienne Rich's poem about Marie Curie: "Power." You can hear Cheryl Strayed read the poem and discuss it here. Or listen to Adrienne Rich read the poem here.

Read Gwendolyn Brooks's "the mother." You can hear Brooks read "the mother" here.

Women in Therapy is  Harriet G. Lerner's book published by Harper and Row.

We reference Plath's poem "Edge" from our recent Galentine's episode (listen here!)

Watch this 1986 interview with Gwendolyn Brooks conducted by Alan Jabbour, director of the Library of Congress' American Folklore division, and E. Ethelbert Miller, poet and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University (~30min).

The ladies reach into your back pocket to talk gay hanky codes and the poets they ASSociate with them.

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.

Bob Damron's Address Book was actually published in 1964 and hand-sold by Bob Damron. Read more about the Damron Guide here.

Read Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California"

Buy Stephanie Brown's Allegory of the Supermarket  from The Ivy Bookshop (one of Baltimore's best indie bookstores!). The book was first published by U of Georgia Press (1999).

Beckian Fritz Goldberg's book referenced in the show is Never Be the Horse (U Akron Press, 1999). Read a recent suite of Goldberg's poems here in Plume. Watch Goldberg give a reading here (~30 min).

James references one of the first viral videos, Kelly's song "Shoes." Read more about the cultural impact of the video here.  

The ladies are joined by the Queen herself, Diane Seuss, to spread some love for Galentine's Day.

Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
      Diane Seuss's MODERN POETRY is available March 5, 2024 from Graywolf Press.
      Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

We discuss Aaron Smith's Book of Daniel , and you can check that book out here.

Read Marianne Moore's "No Swan So Fine,"  first published in Poetry Magazine in October 1932.
Read Moore's famous and oft-anthologized poem "Poetry" and then read Slate's article about her revisions of that poem: "Marianne Moore's 5-decade Struggle with 'Poetry'"

If you haven't dipped your toe into the fabulous Marianne Moore pool yet, here's Interesting Literature's "10 of the Best Marianne Moore Poems Everyone Should Read"

A great essay on Moore's difficulty was published in Lithub here.

George Platt Lynes took an iconic photo of Marianne Moore in her tricorn hat and cape in 1953.  Read more about Lynes and his iconic photos of poets here.

 
Read Sylvia Plath's poem "The Munich Mannequin" (briefly mentioned in the episode) here. And listen to Plath recite it here.

Read Plath's poem "Edge" and hear Jane Gilbert recite "Edge" here (~1.5 min)

Discover "59 Years of Book Covers for The Bell Jar" (a fascinating read in Lithub). 

The queens discuss some unusual, at times outlandish (or downright made-up), and unfortunate ends  some poets have met. 

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 more about Charlotte Brontë (including some of her poems) here.

Brad Gooch's biography of Keith Haring is called Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, and like Diane Seuss's book Modern Poetry, is releasing on March 5, 2024.

Here's a cartoon rendition of the totally made-up story of Aeschylus's death.

Francis Bacon died after contracting a chill, which he developed after stuffing a chicken full of snow. Read some of his--Bacon's, not the chicken's--poems here.

Read some Oscar Wilde poems here.

To read more about Christopher Marlowe and also some of his poems, click here.

Here's an entertaining and educational video about Dante Alighieri.

Watch a (kinda long but totally worth it, girl) documentary about Zelda Fitzgerald (60 min). Also, read Aria Aber's poem "Zelda Fitzgerald" here.

You can read some of Rupert Brooke's best poems here.

Read more about Frank O'Hara's tragic death on Fire Island here.

As outlined in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Keats, who was often in poor health, was regularly in contact with one of the deadliest diseases of his day: tuberculosis. Keats cared for his infected brother, Tom, before contracting the disease, then known as consumption, himself. As his illness took hold, Keats relocated to Italy in the hope that the climate would have a positive effect on his ailments. He was buried in Rome, where his gravestone describes him as "one whose name was writ in water." Read more here.

Here's a great 10-minute talk on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Watch Suzanne Somers's Thighmaster commercial here.

The queens issue a BOLO for  poetry red flags before getting around to a satisfying Jack-Off.

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.


Watch Lucie Brock-Broido read her poem "You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World," from Stay, Illusion at the National Book Award Finalists' reading (~3 min).

Whitney Houston performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" on January 27, 1991. (We recorded the fact-check for this episode 33 years to the day from that performance!) Watch Whitney sing it here. And then watch Cher's rendition here.

The Friends episode "The One with the Joke" aired Jan 13, 2000 in Season 6, Episode 12. You can watch the clip we reference here (~4 min).

Poems by Laura Riding Jackson we quote from include:
"The World and I"
"The Spring Has Many Silences"
"Voices"
Listen to Laura Riding Jackson read her poems at the U. of Florida in 1975  (~30 min).

Poems by Jack Spicer we quote from include:
"Helen: A Revision"
"Concord Hymn"
"A Poem For Dada Day At The Place April 1, 1958"
Just for fun, check out this fabulous reading of Spicer's "For Mac," read by CA Conrad (~2 min). The last line is utterly devastating.

Here's a compilation of Sandra stealing the scenes of 227 with just one word: MARY.

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 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 Rick Hilles's "A Visionary's Company"

Listen to Seduction's hit song "Two To Make It Right." Of the six songs on the 13-track Bodyguard soundtrack, Whitney Houston sings 6. Michelle Visage's group The S.O.U.L.S.Y.S.T.E.M. performs "It's Going to Be a Lovely Day" on the album.

Read Linda Bierds's poem "Ghost Trio"

Watch a live performance of Tori Amos's "Putting the Damage On." Check out the Tori-licious website Toriphoria, containing all things Amos.

Rita Dove's poem "Soup" is from her latest collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse and you can listen to her reading it here.

Read Jane Kenyon's poem "Three Songs at the End of Summer"

Read Robert Penn Warren's poem "Tell Me a Story." Watch Natasha Trethewey's final lecture in her 2-term Poet Laureateship, "The World of Action and Liability: On Saying What Happens," in which she contends with Penn Warren, violent and racist histories, and the role of poetry in social justice. (1 hour). Trethewey later published the text of the lecture under the title "The Quarrel With Ourselves."

Listen/watch Ani DiFranco's fabulous "Untouchable Face"

Watch Sandra Cisneros read her poem "After a Quote from My Father."

Read Darnell Arnoult's "Outrageous Love."

Check out the fabulous Brenda Shaughnessy's poem "Card 19: The Sun."

Get frankly franking frank with the queens this week--then let's talk about sex, baby!

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 more about Frank O'Hara. And read here about Tim Dlugos. 

 Frank O'Hara wrote "Personism: A Manifesto" that was both manifesto and send-up of manifestos. In it, he advocates for poems that sound like they've got a real person in mind as an audience. In one part of it, he writes, "You just go on your nerve'." You can read the whole manifesto here.

 Read O'Hara's poem "F. (Missive & Walk) I. 53" which appeared in The Paris Review in Summer 1970.

Read  O'Hara's "Pearl Harbor"

Watch the official video for the INXS song "Suicide Blonde" ( which includes the line, "You want to make her suicide blonde") here.

Read Diane Seuss talk about O'Hara in this Adroit Journal interview: "On Frank O'Hara and Marilyn Monroe."

Frank O'Hara's poem "Avenue A" begins "we hardly ever see the moon anymore." Read the whole poem.

Hear Tim Dlugos read "The Nineteenth Century is 183 Years Old"

Read a review of Tim Dlugos's collected poems edited by David Trinidad called A Fast Life.

In the segment "Sex Lives of Poets" we mention the following books/poets:
Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours & Glass, Irony and God
Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman
Megan Fernandes, I Do Everything I'm Told
Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Never Be the Horse
Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
francine j. harris, Play Dead
Tom Healey, What the Right Hand Knows
Brenda Hillman, Loose Sugar
Thylias Moss, Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler
Naomi Shihab Nye, Mint Snowball
Mary Oliver, Thirst
Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
Kevin Prufer, The Finger Bone & Strange Wood
Adrienne Rich, Diving Into the Wreck
Wesley Rothman, Subwoofer

The queens help you start your new year off right: with some fierce, unapologetic, fabulous queer writers!

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.

J Jennifer Espinoza's first full-length collection of poems, I Don't Want to Be Misunderstood, is available for pre-order at Alice James Books and will be released in 2024. You can read her poem "Birthday Suits" here.

Read James L. White's "Making Love to Myself." The poem is included in White's book The Salt Ecstasies, published postmortem by Graywolf in 1982.

You can follow Deon Robinson on Instagram: @djrthepoet and read more about him here.

Check out Celeste Gainey (we read her incredible poem "In Our Nation's Capital" on the show) at her website: https://celestegainey.com

Elise D'Haene is Celeste's screenwriter, novelist, and professor partner, and you can read more about her here.

Read Justin Chin's obit. And read his epic poem "Lick My Butt." Watch Chin read his poem "The Glitters" here (~2.5 min).

Read Dennis Cooper's "After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade." You can watch Dennis Cooper interviewed on More Than a Mouthful: Queer Culture TV here.  

The queens have a mind of winter in this showcase of iconically cold poems. Ice, ice, baby!

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 "Those Winter Sundays" or listen to Robert Hayden read it here. Read more about A Ballad of Remembrance.

Read Robert Frost's poem "Birches." Frost reads it (audio only) here (~3 minutes). 

You can read "More" by Marie Howe here.

Watch a sock puppet read Timothy Liu's poem "Winter" -- because like why not? Poetry is for puppets, too, girl. Or read the text of it here. 

Read Jennifer Chang's "The World."

Here is Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter."

Read "Paul Revere's Ride" here. 

Write with the Breaking Form queens before we play a game of poetry homonyms.

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. 

You can read more about and poems by Thomas Centolella here. 

The poems we mention in "Homonyms" are:

"Yellowjackets" by Kimiko Hahn

"Nothing Gentle Will Remain" by CA Conrad

"Disillusion" by Langston Hughes

"Peach" by D.H. Lawrence

"Forgiveness, Perhaps" by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. At the link, you can also read my favorite of Marci's poem "Even America's Dearest Underdog." Visit her website to read more of her fabulous work!

"Reading to My Father" by Jorie Graham

"What It Look Like" by Terrance Hayes

James references the movie Desperado in his poem "Villain" in Romantic Comedy.

The Todd Haynes quote we reference in tandem with Terrance Hayes's poem, is from I'm Not There, written by the director. 

The queens talk more True Crime poems in an episode so good, it'll feel like you're breaking the law!

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 Natasha Trethewey's "Imperatives for Carrying on in the Aftermath." Listen to Trethewey interviewed by NPR here--it's a riveting and utterly heartbreaking story.

You can read Sharon Olds's poem "Photographs Courtesy of the Fall River Historical
Society" in the journal Calliope here and browse the Borden house crime scene photos reference in the poem here. The poem is from Satan Says.  You can also read her poem "Death of Marilyn Monroe," from The Dead & the Living.

We mention Allison Benis-White's haunting and beautiful book of poems (about 5 Wendy's, including Wendy Coffield--the Green River Killer's first victim). Buy it here!

We also mention Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's book Slamming Open the Door--which you can also buy (of course from an indie!) here.

Watch Mark Doty read his powerful poem "Charlie Howard's Descent." Charlie Howard, as Mark explains, was thrown off a bridge to his death in a 1985 hate crime.

For more about the Smiley Face Murders (not to be confused with the Smiley Face Killer), listen to this Crime Junkie episode.

Watch bigot Anita Bryant pied by Tom Higgins.
You can read James's poem about it, "On Dark Days, I Imagine My Parents' Wedding Video," from The Iowa Review Online.

The queens play poetry detective in this episode devoted to true crime-inspired poems.

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.

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.

The queens' Kissing Booth is now open! We talk poetic kisses and then read some recent poetry crushes.

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 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.

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!

Snap out of it! The queens use Cher to revise some poems and the result is ICONIC!

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.

 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!" 

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.

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.

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. 

The gorls chop up some gorgeous lines before playing Mean, Queen, or Blue Jean.

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.

"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.

The queens put the ass in astonishment & tease out favorite  moments in poems.

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 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).