Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall

Arts

Frequency: 1 episode/7d. Total Eps: 206

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.

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🇺🇸 USA - books
20/08/2025
#97
🇫🇷 France - books
02/08/2025
#96

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https://upittpress.org/books/9780822967040/
120 shares
https://fourwaybooks.com/site/romantic-comedy/
117 shares
https://bluestockings.com/
14 shares

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w
2 shares
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoZ1e5kjjcs
2 shares
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B4jPRzaJck
2 shares

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Score global : 67%

Publication history

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Poetry Babies

Season 3 · Episode 8

Monday, July 28, 2025 • Duration 25:11

The queens play poetry matchmakers and nine months later, boom, there's a poetry baby!

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Robyn Schiff's most recent book is Information Desk: An Epic (Penguin Poets, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024).

Read more about Karyna McGlynn's book I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl

Check out Randall Mann's latest book, a new and selected, from Copper Canyon.

Do yourself a favor and buy Laura Newbern's book A Night in the Country (also available on the awful conglomerate) and check out Newbern's website.

Watch this tribute to Eavan Boland.

You can find many poems of Richard Siken's on his website.

Watch this half-hour interview with Mark Strand (from when he was Poet Laureate).

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Touchstone Poems

Season 3 · Episode 7

Monday, July 21, 2025 • Duration 30:21

The gals talk foundational poems--and they might just surprise you!

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Quan Barry's "The 1986 Apple Super Bowl Commercial as Intervention" refers to this iconic 1984 Apple Computer commercial aired during the SuperBowl.

The Brigit Pegeen Kelly poem we mention is "Three Cows and the Moon" was originally published in New England Review in 1993. You can hear Kelly read the poem here (~10 minutes). It's fucking worth it!

William Stafford, "Traveling Through the Dark" was the title poem of Stafford's 2nd book, published in 1962, which won the 1963 National Book Award. To look at some drafts of this poem, check out the Stafford archive online. Hear him read it here.

Read more about Kevin Killian's Selected Amazon Reviews. And check out this brief (~1min) Instagram post of Killian reading from it here.

Encore Presentation: Fan Fic (Ep. 137)

Season 2 · Episode 19

Monday, May 19, 2025 • Duration 27:35

A Little Bit Alexis

Season 1 · Episode 101

Monday, July 31, 2023 • Duration 28:02

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 theprank meme, click . 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.netDonations in memory of Minnie-Bruce may be made to the Friends of Dorothy House in Syracuse, NY. If you would like to donate, go .Read James Wright's poem "."

Keeping It 100

Season 1 · Episode 100

Monday, July 24, 2023 • Duration 29:46

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 . We particularly recommend you stop your day and read his poem Read Thomas James's bio and peruse some of his poems . I've always really loved 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 Also, go read Aaron's poem "" that James mentions loving. You can read James's poem " here (though imagine it in tercets) and view the George Dawe painting referenced in the poem . Explore Jill Alexander Essbaum's fabulous work . 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)

Season 1 · Episode 99

Monday, July 17, 2023 • Duration 29:18

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 You can watch him read his poem here. (~3.5 min)

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

Season 1 · Episode 98

Monday, July 10, 2023 • Duration 31:16

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 . You can read his poem (though imagine it's in tercets).Toi Dericotte is the author of 6 collections of poetry, including (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 (FSG, 2015). You can read some of his poems .

Hereditary

Season 1 · Episode 97

Monday, July 3, 2023 • Duration 30:30

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 in 2008.Watch Gary Jackson read Lynda Hull's poem (~3 minutes).Stanley Kunitz reads his poem here (~2 minutes).If you haven't read Anne Carson's it is worthwhile & contains a crazy-ass story about Hemingway deciding to dissolve his friendship with Gertrude Stein.Read Lynn Emmanuel's here.

Shimmering Terror (with Guest Randall Mann)

Season 1 · Episode 96

Monday, June 26, 2023 • Duration 30:17

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 .Read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" , or watch John Murillo read the poem . is Robert Frost's second book of poems. It contains 17 poems, including and You can read the Marianne Moore poem "What Are Years" along with an essay by Annie Finch . Or you can by Robert Pinsky.

Crimes Against Diction

Season 1 · Episode 95

Monday, June 19, 2023 • Duration 25:01

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 .

Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

Youtube99+

Apple Podcast6

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

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Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

Youtube99+

Apple Podcast6