Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

If you bring along to Breaking Form Book Club an extra bottle of chardonnay,  we'll read some poems from books you may have missed....If you'd like to 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 Zando and Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP Lit: https://zandoprojects.com/imprints/sjp-lit/ Read the entirety of Marilyn Chin's poem "How I Got that Name" Read the title poem of Denis Johnson's collection The Incognito Lounge. You can read more about the poet 'Annah Sobelman here, including a few poems.Randall Jarrell's poem "Losses" appeared in August 1944 issue of Poetry Magazine. It is the title poem of his 1948 book (Harcourt). You can read Jarrell's NY Times obit here.

If you'd like to 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 purchase The Selected Shepherd edited by Jericho Brown directly from the press at: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948216/Check out Jericho Brown's website. Read the title poem from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Tradition here. Reginald Shepherd's blog can be found online here. The specific posts on the AWP Panel "Gay Male Poetry: Post Identity Politics?" Can be found here:    Part 1    Part 2Shepherd also wrote a post for Harriet, the blog for the Poetry Foundation, as he was getting ready to deliver the panel. You can read that post here.Robert Philen's remarks about Reginald Shepherd's memoir were delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society in 2013. You can read them here.In the show, Jericho references Frank O'Hara being gay/putting phallic things around his mouth. You can read O'Hara's poem "Homosexuality" here.Richard Hugo's book of essays The Triggering Town was published in 1979 and reissued in 2010. You can read an essay from the book about "the triggering subject" here.Read Reginald Shepherd's poem "Syntax."Watch Shepherd read his poems at Berry College here. (~1 hour.) Poems include "Difficult Music," "White Sargasso Sea," "Slaves," "The Friend," "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," "Unused," "Tantalus in May," "Maritime," and "The Gods at 3am" (at the 30:55 min mark). 

The queens love to love you--but it didn't always start out like that. Stick around for our game: "Pulitzer Prize Winning Titles from an Alternate Universe."Please 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.If you have library access, Ena Jung's 2015 article "The Breath of Emily Dickinson's Dashes" is worth the time.Watch Bill Murray read two of the more obscure Wallace Stevens poems here. Watch Jonathan Pryce read Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"Watch James Wright read some of his iconic poems, including "A Blessing" (at 33:15--he calls the poem "a description") here.John Ashbery's Flow Chart is a book-length poem comprising 4,794 lines, divided into six numbered chapters, each of which is further divided into sections or verse-paragraphs, varying in number from seven to 42. The sections vary in length from one or two lines, to seven pages. It includes at least one double-sestina (and one of them references oral sex between men).Hear Linda Gregg read and be interviewed in 1986 (~25 mins).Here's a quick book-trailer of C. Dale Young's The Halo, including a reading of one of the poems by Young.Listen to a few minutes of Archibald Macleish's Conquistador here.We can recommend Peter Maber's 2008 article about John Berryman's Dream Songs, "'So-called black': Reassessing John Berryman’s Blackface Minstrelsy" as a good starting place to think about the racism in that book.Jazz Age poet, translator, and Poetry editor George Dillon was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1906.At 24, Audrey Wurdemann is the youngest person to win the poetry Pulitzer (for Bright Ambush). Read a few poems here.Read Robert P. Tristram Coffin's poem "Messages"Here's Mark Strand reading "Sleeping With One Eye Open"We reference  Stevie Nicks (a Gemini) singing her iconic song "Landslide"Winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin controversially  included letters from Elizabeth Hardwick (Lowell's former wife). The letters were sent to him after he left her for the English socialite and writer Caroline Blackwood. He was warned by many, among them Elizabeth Bishop, that “art just isn’t worth that much.”

The queens remake the endings of iconic poems, then play a round of "Gay or Homophobic?"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 William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Or hear it read by Dame Helen Mirren here.  Read Emily Dickinson's Poem 479 ("Because I could not stop for death"). James makes a reference to Linda Gregg's iconic "The Poet Goes About Her Business." Hear Creeley read "I Know a Man" here and read the text of the poem here. Here's the text of Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Watch Ponyboy in The Outsiders recite the poem here. Stay golden, Ponyboy.In the episode, James recites the last line of Robert Pinksy's "Shirt."We love this interview where Jericho Brown talks about line breaks (starting at the 7-minute mark).

Aaron spills the tea about recording a spoken word album, then the queens get on all fours for some  Poet Sex Positions. Woof woof, darlings!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 find Aaron's Outside the Lines album here on iTunes. You can listen here to Aaron Smith's "Outside the Lines," the title poem of his spoken word album.The Partridge Family is an American musical sitcom created by Bernard Slade, which aired September 25, 1970, to August 24, 1974, on ABC. Watch the pilot episode here. Its stars included Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Susan Day, and Danny Bonaduce. The family was loosely based on the real-life musical family the Cowsills, a popular band in the late 1960s and early 1970s.The verse sung by Aaron and Belinda which proceeds Aaron's poem "Pray the Gay Away" – "at the cross, at the cross" is from the hymn "Alas, and did my Savior bleed." "Pray the Gay Away" appears in Aaron's most recent book, Stop Lying, which you can purchase at the link above. Aaron's poem "After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong About the Sadness of Men Who Love Men" can be read online at the Poetry Society, followed by a short essay Aaron wrote about writing the poem.Sister Act 2 has a subtitle and it is:  Back in the Habit. It stars It starred Lauryn Hill in her breakout role, as well as Sheryl Lee Ralph and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Watch Lauryn Hill sing "Joyful Joyful." Watch Linda Pastan read her poem, "Why are Your Poems So Dark?" (The announcer lets us know that she won a poetry prize from Mademoiselle -- the runner up was Sylvia Plath.)

It's a queens' jubilee as we discuss  Clifton and  Glück poems with Diane Seuss, who concludes by reading a new poem!Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:      Diane Seuss's MODERN POETRY is available now from Graywolf Press.     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Louise Glück's first book is Firstborn, published in 1968 when she was 25. You can read "Here Are My Black Clothes" Recorded on March 27, 2023, here is one of Louise Glück's final recorded readings (~15 minutes).Read the text of Lucille Clifton "Study the Masters." You can see Tara Betts read that poem here.Watch an interview with Prof. Clifton  here.You can read  more about  the first crafting, and subsequent replications, of Keats's death masks here.

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.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. 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."

It's the love song of J. Alfred Prufcock--er, Prufrock this week as the queens discuss the sex life of T.S. Eliot.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.Valerie Eliot died in 2012 at age 86. Her net worth was about 17.5 million dollars. She first memorized Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" at 14, and from the age of 18 she tried to get into his orbit, even going to the same church and then becoming his secretary at Faber & Faber. You can read her obit here. You can read Eliot's letters to Emily Hale for free here.The tea about Eliot's letters are here and here.Read Louis Menad's "The Women Come and Go" in The New Yorker, which forms the basis of many of the facts we detail in the episode.Another New Yorker article by William H. Pritchard that focuses particularly on the relationship between Haigh-Wood and Eliot is "The Hollow Man and His Wife."This Guardian article discusses Vivienne's diaries.

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 GodSandra Cisneros, Loose WomanMegan Fernandes, I Do Everything I'm ToldBeckian Fritz Goldberg, Never Be the HorseBenjamin Garcia, Thrown in the ThroatAllen Ginsberg, Howlfrancine j. harris, Play DeadTom Healey, What the Right Hand KnowsBrenda Hillman, Loose SugarThylias Moss, Last Chance for the Tarzan HollerNaomi Shihab Nye, Mint SnowballMary Oliver, ThirstWillie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon BonKevin Prufer, The Finger Bone & Strange WoodAdrienne Rich, Diving Into the WreckWesley 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.comElise 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 HayesJames 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 HistoricalSociety" 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.