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    #poetry

    Explore "#poetry" with insightful episodes like "Portals: a Tribute to Maureen Seaton", "Enjambment", "Hoedown", "F*CKSTICK" and "Poppers" from podcasts like ""Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast", "Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast", "Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast", "Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast" and "Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast"" and more!

    Episodes (100)

    Portals: a Tribute to Maureen Seaton

    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).

    Enjambment

    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. 

    Hoedown

    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.

    F*CKSTICK

    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."

    Poppers

    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 review of it here.

    Carl Phillips reads Linda Gregg’s poem “It Is the Rising I Love” from The Paris Review (~2 min).

    Listen to Jorie Graham read “Why” from To 2040.

    If you want to read Jack Kerouac’s haiku, check them out here.

    Angelo Nikolopoulos’s website is https://www.angelonikolopoulos.com. Catch a reading with Angelo, Jameson Fitzpatrick, and Monica McClure here.

    True and Actual (with Lynn Emanuel / part. 2)

    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 Anthology and Best American Poetry and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a poetry editor for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a judge for the National Book Awards.

    She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a fellowship from the Ranieri Foundation and the National Poetry Series.

    Read Lynn's poem “Homage to Sharon Stone." Sharon Stone is a Pisces (March 10), which is also Lynn’s sign (Mar. 14).

    Deborah Bogen’s essay “Emanuel’s Elegies” can be found in Plume here. Check out Bogen’s website here:  https://www.deborahbogen.net

    Sharon Olds's baseball poem is collected in This Sporting Life: Contemporary American Poems About Sports and Games, published by Milkweed in 1987.

    The Writer’s Almanac asked Sharon Olds to give some advice to young poets, and she said: "Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can — not more than the people around you but not so much less." More of the interview can be found here.

    Watch Lynn talk about some of her favorite/influential poets here

    Pills, Portraits, Pessoa (with Lynn Emanuel / pt. 1)

    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 included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a poetry editor for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a judge for the National Book Awards.  She has been, as well,  the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a fellowship from the Ranieri Foundation and the National Poetry Series. 

    When Fernando Pessoa died in 1935, he left a huge body of work under his own name and under the name of other poets--men he not only invented but provided with separate and distinct personalities, personal histories and biographies, religious beliefs, political points of view, and aesthetic styles. There were three major heteronyms: Alberto Cairo, Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. Pessoa explained: “Pseudonymous works are by the author in his own person, except in the name he signs; heteronymous works are by the author outside his own person. They proceed from a full-fledged individual created by him, like the lines spoken by a character in a drama he might write.” For more about Pessoa and his heteronyms, read this fabulous essay in Lit Hub or watch this 30-min BBC Radio 3 profile of the author here

     Read this interview with Lynn conducted by Mathias Svalina in Blackbird.

    Watch Lynn Emanuel read with Lucia LoTempio and Lauren Russell for the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (90 min).

     

    Horrible Men

    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 to his obituary in The Independent, his "relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small – though perhaps that was where the aggression originated."

    Sally Hayes and Holden Caulfield do go on a date in Catcher in the Rye—they end up seeing a play and then going ice-skating, where Holden tells her she's phony, then says she's a "royal pain in the ass," then asks her to run away. His near-shouting and impulsiveness scares her.  Holden leaves her at the skating rink, and Sally says she'll find her own way home.

    For more about Gyllenhall and "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" which contains the keychain reference, go here.

    We reference Frank O'Hara's famous poem "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed]" and you can read the poem here

    Read the original article about Ta-Nehisi Coates attending the school board meeting at which the banning of his book Between the World and Me

    Digging for Poems

    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—the first exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—which took place in London and was an alternative to the restrictive Royal Academy summer exhibition. A London newspaper review of the exhibition mentioned Siddal by name: “Her drawings display an admiring adoption of all the most startling peculiarities of Mr. Rossetti’s style, but they have nevertheless qualities which entitle them to high praise.” The reviewer also expressed admiration for the “high, pure, and independent feeling” of Siddal’s rendering of human faces in her drawings. Her painting, Clerk Saunders, was purchased by an American collector in attendance. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean.

    Read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (the title poem of her first published book) here.  If you're interested in learning a bit more about Christina Rossetti's drawings and verse, watch this short and fabulous video exhibition. 

    Here's the article Aaron references which ranks flavored lube. You're welcome.

    Learn more about Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings here (Tate). Read his poem "Jenny" (one of the poems he buried with Siddal).

    The In-Between (with Diannely Antigua)

    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 & Poetry and is currently the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive that title.

    Diannely reads "Diary Entry # 16 About Using My Body" from Good Monster. The poem was originally published in Muzzle Magazine and you can read it here.

    Two poems Diannely mentions but doesn't read:
    "Praise to the Boys" in the Paris Review
    &
    "Chronically" in Pangyrus.

    You can read the entire Raque Dalton poem "Like You" ("Como Tú") translated by Jack Hirschman here.

    Go here to listen to Diannely read poems and be interviewed on Was I in a Cult

    Read a rave review of Ugly Music in Muzzle Magazine.

    Watch Diannely tell stories and read in the Creative Mornings  series (~25 min).

    Here's another terrific recording of Diannely Antigua reading at City of Asylum for "Latinx and Proud" series (~15 min). 

    National Book Award Predictions

    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 (with Adrienne Raphel; ~1 hr)

    Watch Katie Ferris read from Standing in the Forest of Being Alive (with Ilya Kaminsky) here

    Rigoberto Gonzalez reads as part of Poets House's Hard Hat Reading Series from To the Boy Who Was Night here

    Watch Jorie Graham's book launch for To 2040 (~1 hour)

    Terrance Hayes took part in this reading and conversation with Ocean Vuong & Claudia Rankine here (~1.5 hrs). Terrance guested on eps 98 & 99

    Eugenia Leigh reads from Bianca (with Jennifer S. Cheng) at Green Apple Books in San Francisco here. You can also watch Leigh lead a free writing workshop about zuihitsu here

    Watch Randall Mann read his poem "Straight Razor" (included in Deal: New and Selected Poems). Randy was our guest on ep 96

    Paisley Rekdal talks about West: A Translation here (~50 min)

    Watch sam sax read "Everyone's an Expert at Something" here

    Read Charif Shanahan's "On the Overnight from Agadir" in Trace Evidence

    Brenda Shaughnessy reads from Tanya here

    Watch Monica Youn read from From From  here (~30 min). Read "Against Imagism" in The New Yorker her

    Deep Image Poets

    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 Franzen's translation of Lorca's poem "La Guitarra." Cola Franzen (February 4, 1923 – April 5, 2018) was an American writer and translator. Among her awards are the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the Gregory Kolovakos Award from PEN American Center for expansion of Hispanic Literature to an English-language audience.

    Read James Wright's poem "A Blessing" or watch him read it here (at the 33:15 mark).

    According to Dr. Kristin Mark, a sex and relationships researcher and a professor at the University of Kentucky, ejaculated sperm can travel up to 28 mph. It is, as you can imagine, difficult to measure.

    A Little Bit Alexis

    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 and I reference in the episode, it's worth your time here.

    For more about the Devil Wears Prada prank meme, click here.

    A public celebration of Minnie Bruce’s life will take place in the near future. Details will be posted on her social media and on her website: https://minniebrucepratt.net
    Donations in memory of Minnie-Bruce may be made to the Friends of Dorothy House in Syracuse, NY. If you would like to donate, go  here.

    Read James Wright's poem "A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack."

    Keeping It 100

    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 retrospective of Ed Smith's work for the LA Times.

    Watch this World AIDS Day commemoration that celebrates the works of Walta Borawski and Robert Ferro (recorded December 1, 2022)

    You can learn more about the incredible poet Christopher Gilbert here. We particularly recommend you stop your day and read his poem "How the Stars Understand Us"

    Read Thomas James's bio and peruse some of his poems here.  I've always really loved this essay on James's work by Lucie Brock-Broido and can't recommend it enough to you.

    You can read Aaron's poem "After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong about the Sadness of Men Who Love Men" as well as a little essay about the poem here on the Poetry Society of America's website. Also, go read Aaron's poem "Sissy" that James mentions loving.

    You can read James's poem "A Fact Which Occurred in America" here (though imagine it in tercets) and view the George Dawe painting referenced in the poem here.

    Explore Jill Alexander Essbaum's fabulous work here.

    Watch the fight scene in Mommie Dearest here if you don't get the "I am not one of your fans" reference. It's 3.5 minutes of high (but violent) camp.

    In Real Time (with Terrance Hayes / pt. 2)

    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 the poet here.

    Norman Dubie died in February. He was an Aries (April 10, 1945) . Read his poem "An Annual of the Dark Physics."  You can watch him read his poem "The Sparrow" here. (~3.5 min)

    Read Steve Orlen's poem "In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas." 

    Russell Westbank III plays basketball for the LA Clippers. The “Clippers” were named in 1978, when the franchise moved from Buffalo to San Diego, to represent the sailing ships in the bay; a “clipper” is a merchant sailing ship. The team kept the name when they moved to L.A. in 1984.

    Psuedacris Crucifer is the scientific name of a small chorus frog, also known as the spring peeper. Terrance's poem of the same name appears here in The New Yorker.

    Read Wanda Coleman's "American Sonnet 91" and buy her book of sonnets, Heart First into this Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets, with intro by Mahogany L. Browne.

    Tools vs. Weapons (with Terrance Hayes / pt. 1)

    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, Terrance reiterates that Michael S. Harper said that the words "nice," "cute," and "amazing" do not belong in poems. The whole interview with Hayes is here.

    James's poem "A Fact Which Occurred in America" referenced in the show is based on the George Dawe 1810 painting, A Negro Over-Powering a Buffalo - A Fact Which Occurred in America in 1809,  which you can view online here.  You can read his poem here (though imagine it's in tercets).

    Toi Dericotte is the author of 6 collections of poetry, including I: New and Selected Poems (U of Pittsburgh, 2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Read more about her at her website: http://toiderricotte.com/index.php/about/

    Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of more than 15 books of poems, most recently The Emperor of Water Clocks (FSG, 2015). You can read some of his poems here

    Hereditary

    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 "Letters to a Stranger." Then read this beautiful reconsideration of the poet by Lucie Brock-Broido, who used to photocopy James's poems and give them to her classes at Columbia, before Graywolf republished Letters to a Stranger in 2008.

    Watch Gary Jackson read Lynda Hull's poem "Magical Thinking" (~3 minutes).

    Stanley Kunitz reads his poem "The Portrait" here (~2 minutes).

    If you haven't read Anne Carson's "The Gender of Sound," it is worthwhile & contains a crazy-ass story about Hemingway deciding to dissolve his friendship with Gertrude Stein.

    Read Lynn Emmanuel's "Inside Gertrude Stein" here.

    Read Anna Akhmatova's "Lot's Wife" here.

    Read Osip Mandelstam's "I was washing at night out in the yard" here. 

    Watch Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon read her poem "Solace" and then discuss how her poem draws inspiration from science.

    Jennifer Michael Hecht's poem "Funny Strange" from her book Funny can be read from here.

    Manuel Muñoz is the author of  the short story collectionThe Consequences (Graywolf, 2022). He reads Gary Soto's poem "The Morning They Shot Tony Lopez, Barber and Pusher Who Went Too Far 1958" from Soto's 1977 volume The Elements of San Joaquin. You can read a tiny essay Muñoz published about Soto in West Branch, in a folio edited by poet Shara Lessley.

    Shimmering Terror (with Guest Randall Mann)

    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 literary reputation by A. Van Jordan on the Best American Poetry blog here.

    Read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" here, or watch John Murillo read the poem here.

    North of Boston is Robert Frost's second book of poems. It contains 17 poems, including "Mending Wall" and "The Death of the Hired Man.

    You can read the Marianne Moore poem "What Are Years" along with an essay by Annie Finch here. Or you can watch the poem read by Robert Pinsky.

    Crimes Against Diction

    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 "infantilizing." The addition of the suffix "-ies" (or in the singular form, "-y") converts the word into a diminutive. Literally: "little pants." .... In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of "panties" is from a 1908 set of instructions for making doll clothes." Read the rest of the article here

    Banned Books

    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 book called Vixen: Story of a Woman. Check out Blanche’s reaction to it here. We also mention the existence of a few Golden Girls episodes centering on Blanche’s relationship with her gay brother, Clay. Check out a clip of one  of those here.

    You can see 4 incredible, short interviews with Reinaldo Arenas (~19 mins) here