Explore every episode of the podcast Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast
Dive into the complete episode list for Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Title
Pub. Date
Duration
Poetry Babies
28 Jul 2025
00:25:11
The queens play poetry matchmakers and nine months later, boom, there's a poetry baby!
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!
Read more about Kevin Killian's Selected Amazon Reviews. And check out this brief (~1min) Instagram post of Killian reading from it here.
The poem by Linda Gregg that James mentions (with women standing in the trees knocking down figs) is "The Poet Goes About Her Business."
You can read Kate Daniels "War Photograph" here. For more about the photograph and the people in it, read this article.
Read Nazim Hikmet's "On Living" and learn more about Hikmet here.
Encore Presentation: Fan Fic (Ep. 137)
19 May 2025
00:27:35
A Little Bit Alexis
31 Jul 2023
00:28:02
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 showon 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 COMEDYis 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.
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"
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.
Terrance Hayes talks about fatherhood, witnessing, and getting a D in high school English.
Support Breaking Form! Review the showon 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 COMEDYis 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."
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.
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)
10 Jul 2023
00:31:16
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 showon 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 COMEDYis 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
03 Jul 2023
00:30:30
The queens bust out their microscopes and examine poetic DNA.
Support Breaking Form! Review the showon 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 COMEDYis 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.
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)
26 Jun 2023
00:30:17
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 COMEDYis 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.
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
19 Jun 2023
00:25:01
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 COMEDYis 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
12 Jun 2023
00:27:46
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 COMEDYis 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.
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.
Summer Fun
05 Jun 2023
00:26:55
The queens get beachy, play f*ck marry kill with a Pulitzer winner, and fabricate some fab poets' drag names.
Support Breaking Form, the spirit so moves you: Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. Buy our books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Watch Carl Phillips read from Then the War: and Selected Poems, 2007-2020, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, here (~1 hour).
Poets we mention in this extravaganza include: Denise Duhamel, Queen for a Day Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems David Trinidad, Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera ; Swinging on a Star Franny Choi, Soft Science sam sax, Madness Danez Smith, Homie You can read a short excerpt of Nin Andrews's The Book of Orgasms at her website here. Jennifer L. Knox, Crushing It Camille Guthrie, Diamonds Michael Dumanis, My Soviet Union Louise Gluck You can watch Jorie Graham's book launch for her newest collection, To 2040, online here (~1 hour). Rita Dove's latest book is Playlist for the Apocalypse. Amy Clampitt Emily Dickinson Edgar Allen Poe Robert Lowell e.e. cummings Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Gertrude Stein John Donne's reputation as a major poet is now cemented, but it wasn't always so. Donne fell out of fashion for much of the 18th and 19th centuries. Read more about that in Adam Kirsch's review of Katherine Rundell's biography of Donne in the New Yorker, here. Ezra Pound Sara Teasdale, whom you can read more about here. Hart Crane Robert Frost Walt Whitman Lucille Clifton Thomas Hardy John Keats Marilyn Chin's sixth book of poetry, Sage, was released by Norton in May 2023. Mark Doty Patrick Phillips, whose most recent book is Song of the Closing Doors (Knopf, 2022),. Visit Phillips's website.
The Impossible
29 May 2023
00:29:37
The queens try to say it clearly and make it beautiful, no matter what, in this episode revisiting Bruce Weigl's poem "The Impossible." TW for sexual assault and pedophilia.
If you need resources, for yourself or a loved one, regarding sexual assault and pedophilia/incest, please visit https://www.rainn.org.
Support Breaking Form, the spirit so moves you: Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. Buy our books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Born January 27, 1949 (which makes him an Aquarius), Bruce Weigl enlisted in the Army soon after turning 18 and served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He was awarded the Bronze Star. After he came back from the war, he attended Oberlin College, where Franz Wright was his classmate and encouraged Weigl to send his poems to James Wright. JW wrote back, and a line from that letter serves as the epigraph to Weigl's third book, Song of Napalm. The line is: "Out of the horror there rises a musical ache that is beautiful." Song of Napalm was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He earned an MA from the University of New Hampshire and a PhD at the University of Utah. He is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and a memoir, The Circle of Hanh. His book The Abundance of Nothing was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His most recent book is Among Elms, in Ambush, from Boa in 2021. Read more about him here.
Read Weigl's poem "The Impossible" here. "The Impossible" is included in Bruce Weigl's fourth book of poems, What Saves Us, published in 1992 from Northwestern University Press. We forget to fact check this, but the poem is comprised of 26 lines.
Hear Weigl read "The Impossible" in this hourlong reading, starting at the 35:25 mark. The reading was delivered and recorded at the Friends of Scranton Public Library in October 2013.
We reference an interview with the journal Blast Furnace, the entirety of which you can read here. Another interview with Memorious can be found here.
Watch Weigl read "Song of Napalm" at the College of Southern Maryland in 1981 here (~3.5 min). He discusses beauty and horror before reading the poem.
You can hear a more recent reading by Weigl at Eastern Connecticut State U on 10/3/18 here (~1 hour).
Really?
12 May 2025
00:26:46
The queens boil down the essence of some favorite poems and poets in this game that decides what poetry is *really* about.
In a New Yorker profile interview, Natasha Trethewey discusses Native Guard, and says that we have to remember "the nearly two hundred thousand African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War, who fought for their own freedom, who fought to preserve the Union rather than destroy the Union, to whom there are very few monuments erected. Just think how different the landscape of the South would be, and how differently we would learn about our Southern history, our shared American history, if we had monuments to those soldiers who won the war—who didn’t lose the war but won the war to save the Union. Those are the monuments we need to have." Read the whole conversation and profile here.
Here's a BBC4 adaptation of Browning's The Ring and the Book (~1 hour)
Go here for more about George Meredith's sonnet sequence Modern Love.
If you were looking for a free audio full-text version of Tennyson's In Memoriam read by Elizabeth Klatt, today's your lucky day. (~2.5 hours).
Favorite Least Favorite
22 May 2023
00:28:05
All tea, no shade: the queens spill their favorite--and least favorite--books from beloved poets. As the great poet said, "If equal affection cannot be..." etc, etc.
Please support Breaking Form by: Reviewing Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. Buying our books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
We mention the following poets and books:
Sharon Olds Balladz The Gold Cell The Dead and the Living Blood, Tin, Straw Stag's Leap Odes The Unswept Room
Terrance Hayes American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin Wind in a Box Lighthead How to Be Drawn
Anne Sexton Live or Die Transformations 45 Mercy Street
Louise Glück Firstborn The Triumph of Achilles Meadowlands Ararat. "The Untrustworthy Speaker" that James references appears in Ararat and can be read here. Averno Vita Nova; James quotes one of the title poems, "Vita Nova" (read it here). Watch Louise Glück read with Katie Peterson here (~1 hour).
Mark Doty Source. Read "At the Gym" which you can read here. Atlantis. Aaron references the lines "... lucky we don’t have to know / what something is in order to hold it," which is from the section titled "Michael's Dream" in the title poem of Atlantis. My Alexandria Turtle, Swan. Read the title poem here.
Anne Carson Autobiography of Red Glass, Irony and God Float Nox
Marie Howe The Kingdom of Ordinary Time What the Living Do The Good Thief Magdalene
Aaron references Robley Wilson's Kingdoms of the Ordinary, published by the Pitt Poetry Series on Oct. 1, 1987.
Ama Codjoe's website is https://www.amacodjoe.com. Her book, Bluest Nude, was published by Milkweed in 2022.
Nancy Krygowski is the author of The Woman in the Corner, named one of 2020’s top 100 poetry books by Library Journal, and Velocity, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She teaches in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and is a member of the Pitt Poetry Series interim editorial committee.
Mercy Mercy: Cherapy
15 May 2023
00:29:55
The queens talk poetry through the lyrics of our diva & icon: Cher, who'll turn 77 on May 20.
Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Matthew Dickman's poem "Slow Dance" appears in his book All-American Poem, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award. The poem first appeard in The Missouri Review (Volume 29, Number 3, Fall 2006). Read it here. Or watch a video of the poet reading the poem here.
Hear Ann Lauterbachtalk about sound, performance, and folk music through this reading at U Penn's PennSound archive.
Justin Torres does say he learned a lot from reading poetry and says he loves condensed short stories in this illuminating interview.
Read Sharon Olds's poem "I Go Back to May 1937" first published in her 2nd book, The Gold Cell (1987), here. You can hear a recording of Olds reading that poem here.
Watch the SNL sketch with Molly Shannon, "Sally O'Malley's Rockette Open Audition," here.
You can read Christine Garren's title poem "Among the Monarchs" here.
Find Anne Sexton's "Music Swims Back to Me" here. And read more about Hugh Priesthood's inspiration drawn from that poem for his "The Song Remembers When," recorded by Trisha Yearwood.
Aaron referenced the Sexton poem "How We Danced," in which the speaker's father has an erection as they dance together.
Hero Ratio
08 May 2023
00:29:58
These queens need a hero, not a zero in this episode of heroic percentages.
Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
In the Season 5 Finale of Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) was forced to walk naked through the city. The scene lasts for 6 minutes, not 8 as James says. The nun who follows behind Cersei, ringing a bell and calling out "Shame!" in intervals, is played by Hannah Waddingham. You can get a sense of the scene here. TW for intense misogyny.
Aaron references the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride. Measuring about 8.3 square miles, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp is located between Florin and Guilder. Like other fire swamps, it has large, lush trees, and contains a large percentage of gas bubbles, especially sulfur, which spontaneously combust.
In Fargo, Marge delivers the "And it's a beautiful day" speech in the police cruiser, with the murder suspect in the back of her car as she's driving. In a freaking blizzard.
When Clarice Starling first meets Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter calls Starling a rube and mocking her accent. It occurs around the 5:21 mark here. Foster says that Hopkins improvised the part where Lecter makes fun of Starling's accent. And she also told Graham Norton that she and Hopkins never spoke to one another on set until the end of shooting.
Read more about Weaver landing the role of Ellen Ripley in the Alien films here. Watch Ripley fight the Supreme Alien here; watch Ripley tell Burke to fuck off here.
You can read more about the idea for cutting (and then recovering) "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz here.
Goldie Hawn is a riot as the titular Private Benjamin. Watch Benjamin tell Capt. Lewis she joined a different army here.
Carrie is a 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, and it's based on Stephen King's first published novel of the same name (1974). Piper Laurie plays Carrie's mother, the uber-unstably-religious Margaret White. Watch the tender and poetic Prom scene with Carrie and Tommy here. And watch Carrie argue about her Prom dress with her mom here.
Hot Takes
01 May 2023
00:29:59
This episode's got Aaron sweating, then Miguel Murphy joins the queens for some flaming hot poetry takes.
Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Or, if you'd like to shop indie, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Rilke recalled: "I had to wear beautiful long dresses, and until I started school I went about like a little girl. I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll." Speaking of dolls, read Eva-Maria Simms's article "Uncanny Dolls: Images of Death in Rilke and Freud" in New Literary History here.
The Bernadette Mayer book Aaron references is Midwinter Day (New Directions, reissued the original 1982 book in 1999). Read more about the book's composition (in one day, as Aaron says) in this interview with Mayer conducted by Fanny Howe.
For more about gay sincerity, here's a Gawker article by Paul McAdory called "Gay Sincerity is Scary" and has a tagline that is too shady to not quote: "When it comes to popular gay fiction, on earth we're briefly cringe."
Visit the online Whitman archive (which documents the many, many photographs of Whitman, many of them nudes), thus validating what Miguel says when he calls Walt our first Instagram poet.
Richard Hugo talks about public and private poets in his essay "The Triggering Town"
Miguel references Lucille Clifton's poem "Leaving Fox," which begins "so many fuckless days and nights."
In Brief
24 Apr 2023
00:29:42
The queens get quick (and dirty), summarizing a poet's oeuvre in one sentence.
If you'd like to support Breaking Form, please consider buying Aaron's and James's books (both 2023): Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
We mention two articles about Cummings's anti-Semitism. The review of Susan Cheever's biography is here. The article Aaron mentions is available through J-Stor here. The article (and lost poem) that The Awl published about Cummings can be read here.
Eloise Klein Healy's most recent book is A Brilliant Loss, published in 2022 by Red Hen Press and available here. She is the author of 10 books of poetry. Check out her website: https://www.eloisekleinhealy.com. You can read the poem that Celeste Gainey recites on the show, "Asking About You," here.
Celese Gainey is the author of The Gaffer, published by Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. You can read more about her and her poetry on her website here. In 1974, Gainey was the first woman to be admitted as a gaffer to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (I.A.T.S.E.). In addition to lighting dozens of documentaries, she worked for such programs as 60 Minutes, ABC Close-Up, and 20/20, as well as on feature films like Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, and The Wiz.
HaydenCarRuthStone
17 Apr 2023
00:28:08
The queens discuss how poetry uses us as they highlight the work of Ruth Stone and Hayden Carruth.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis 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.
Phoebe Stone gave a recorded talk about her mother Ruth Stone. It's an audio recording but has a ton of photographs and drafts of Stone's work. It's a personal glimpse into Ruth Stone's life and work. Catch it here (15 min).
Watch the trailer for Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind, Nora Jacobson's documentary on the poet, here. (~3 min).
And you can stream the entire documentary now here (76 min). It includes interviews with family members and friends as well as poets Sharon Olds and Toi Derricotte.
Read a reminiscence of Carruth here (where he's late for lunch with Adrienne Rich).
You can read Carruth's poem "Graves" (from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey) here.
Elegy
10 Apr 2023
00:31:48
Aaron and James stop all the clocks with this episode exploring elegy.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Watch the iconic scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral in which Auden's "Funeral Blues" is read.
Listen to Dylan Thomas read "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" here. A stirring and unforgettable performance of the poem by Michael Sheen is worth your time here.
Listen to Lorca's "Despedida" read here by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Translated as "Farewell," you can read the poem in an English version here. Another is here.
Check out Kathy Fagan's website and online poems here. Buy Bad Hobbyhere.
Read Robert Cording's poem "Elegy for John, My Student Dead of AIDS" (which Aaron highlights in the show) here.
You can read James L. White's fabulous "Making Love to Myself" here.
Read here for a discussion of what happens if/when you disclose suicidal ideation to a therapist, including the therapist's legal obligations to report or not. The site is supported by Mental Health America, a leading nonprofit community-based organization promoting mental health awareness .
Translifeline is a text / call-based hotline which has a policy against non-consensual active rescue, which means they will not call emergency services or law enforcement without your explicit request – even if you tell them you or someone else is in danger. They are required to alert authorities if they think a minor is being emotionally or physically abused or neglected, or they believe that the caller intends to harm someone else.
The Trevor Project (for queer youth) Trevor Lifeline: 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386)
Spin the Bottle
03 Apr 2023
00:30:24
Get ready to spin the bottle! The queens cause some jeopardy in this trivia-filled episode.
Support Breaking Form and buy James's and Aaron's new books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
And please consider supporting the poets we mention on today's show at your favorite independent bookseller. If you need a suggestion, we can recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC.
In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Watch Carl Dennis read at Georgia Tech (introduced by Tom Lux; ~25 min). The book of Dennis's craft essays which I mention in the episode is called Poetry as Persuasion.
Watch this short film on Frank O'Hara, where he reads the following poems (~16 min): Mozart Chemister Fantasy Dedicated to the Health of Allen Ginsberg The Day Lady Died Song (Is it dirty....) Having a Coke with You
Simeon Berry lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant. His first book, Ampersand Revisited (Fence Books), won the 2013 National Poetry Series, and his second book, Monograph (University of Georgia Press), won the 2014 National Poetry Series. Visit Simeon's website here.
John Cranberryman
27 Mar 2023
00:30:04
The queens return to the Poetry Gay Bar and talk mixers & pretty dicks.
f you want to support Breaking Form, please consider buying James and Aaron's new books. Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
See Spencer Reese read "The Upper Room" from The Road to Emmaus here (~3.5 min)
Watch the poet Ai read "The Good Shepherd" here (~3.5 min).
A terrific ee cummings documentary can be seen here (~40 min). Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), often written in all lowercase as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays.
The Gallery of Beautiful Dicks: Pablo Neruda: watch a documentary on Neruda here (~46 min) Alexander Pope: watch a BBC episode on the genius of Pope here (~50 min). Rita Dove (listen to her on The Achiever podcast here) Claudia Rankine: watch her talk about Just Us at the International Literature Festival in Berlin here (~1 hour). Maggie Nelson: watch Nelson in conversation with Judith Butler here (~90 min). Mary Ruefle: watch Ruefle give a lecture about poetry here (~90 min). WS Merwin: watch Merwin read here (~29 min). John Ashbery: listen to him read "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (30 min) here. Gertrude Stein: Listen to Stein read "If I had Told Him" here.
Read Robinson Jeffers's poem "Birds and Fishes" here.
The queens get fictional with Manuel Muñoz, who joins us to talk about boundaries: between poetry and fiction, between land and desire.
If you want to support Breaking Form, please consider buying James and Aaron's new books. Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Manuel Muñoz is the author most recently of The Consequences, a short story collection published in 2022 by Graywolf. Buy the book here!
And watch to Manuel give a short (~3 min) talk about The Consequences here.
Manuel reads from his story "Compromisos," which you can read in its entirety on Electric Lit here.
See Manuel interviewed on 1 Week Critique about The Consequences here (~45 min).
Just the Tips: Literary Submissions
05 May 2025
00:30:17
If you're looking to submit, the queens have some advice for you!
When Anne Hathaway accepted the Critics Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2013, she said, “This is a bittersweet moment for me because I have this award, but you spelled my name wrong." She kind of forgot to thank the Broadcast Film Critics Association for the honor. “It is with an ‘e,’” she clarified, adding, “It’s probably in bad taste for me to point that out here.”
The movie Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough is a 1975 American romance film, directed by Guy Green, starring Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, David Janssen, George Hamilton, Brenda Vaccaro, Melina Mercouri, and Deborah Raffin.
When Louise Gluck accepted her National Book Award for Faithful and Virtuous Night, she said, in part, "I'm astonished. My thanks to the judges for their mercy. Four times," she said, "This is a difficult evening. It's very difficult to lose. I've lost many times. And it is also, it turns out, is very difficult to win. It is not in my script," she said, to a general scattering of laughter in the audience. Watch it here.
Gary Soto was born April 12, 1952. He published The Elements of San Joaquin in 1977 through the Pitt Poetry Series, which released the book on February 1 that year—so he was actually 24! Read more about Soto here. He lists his address on his website, in case you want to write to him: https://garysoto.com
Heather McHugh read and gave a lecture in April 2009 at the University of Arizona's Poetry Center, which keeps a terrific audio/video recording archive. You can watch the reading here. The poems she reads are:
"The Gift" "Not to Be Dwelled On" "Granny's Song" "No Sex for Priests" "I Knew I'd Sing" "Coming" "Etymological Dirge" "Glass House" "From the Tower" "Webcam the World" "Hackers Can Sidejack Cookies" "Philosopher Orders Crispy Pork" "DOMESTIQUE"
watch McHugh give a lecture about the design and impact of the ends of poems, including close readings of powerful last lines including examples from the work of Emo Philips, Abd-ar-Rahman III, Su Tung-po, Anthony Hecht, D.H. Lawrence, Paul Valéry, Alan Dugan, Julio Cortázar, Louis Simpson, Samuel Beckett, and John Frederick Nims.
The poem "Romantic Comedy" can be found online in Bloom's archives here.
Pop Poets
27 Feb 2023
00:26:27
Pop off, queen! If poets could be covered by musicians (instead of musicians covering poems), you'd get...POP POETS
Buy STOP LYING,Aaron Smith's new book of poems, just out from the Pitt Poetry Series. Aaron will be signing copies of the book at AWP on Thursday, March 9 from 12:00-12:30 at the University of Pittsburgh Press (Booths 303, 301).
Buy ROMANTIC COMEDY, James's new book of poems, which will be released on March 15. James will be signing copies of the book at AWP on Saturday, March 11 from 10:30-11:30 at the Four Way Books Booth # 803.
Watch Alan's Morrissette read from Rilke's The Book of Hours here. Alanis is definitely a Gemini (June 1). Rilke is her mirror sign (Sagittarius).
Gordon Lightfoot wrote and sang “If You Could Read My Mind." Check out the Ultra Nate version recorded for the 1998 film 54 here.
Bob Hicok's serial killer poem is “Methodical” and you can read it here.
The Haim video referenced is for "Want You Back" (which is a great song). The video of them walking down a street is here.
The End of Triumph: Breakup Poems with Diane Seuss
20 Feb 2023
00:29:18
The queens talk break-up poetry in a special post-Valentine's Day extravaganza!
You can see Poem 225 (“I’m ‘wife’ – I’ve finished that”) in Dickinson’s handwriting here
Di mentions her essay, “Divine is Mine: Poetry’s Reckless Declarations,” which appears in The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics, edited by Diane Lockward and published in 2018 by Terrapin Books. Take a gander here.
You can read Poem 620 (“Much Madness is divinest Sense —”) here, and see her manuscript version (in her handwriting) here.
You can read Poem 372 (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”) here, and see her manuscript version (in her handwriting) here.
Read Jack Gilbert’s “Failing and Flying” here. And watch Gilbert give a reading (though not from this poem) here.
Read Diane Seuss’s “Love Letter,” originally published in River Mouth Review, here
Worm Sh*t: A Valentine's Day Special with Guest Diane Seuss
13 Feb 2023
00:30:59
The queens talk love and sex and worm shit--with extra special guest, Diane Seuss!
Follow Diane Seuss on Twitter at @dlseuss and on Instagram at @dseuss
If you want to sing along with us to Foreigner's “I Want to Know What Love Is” but you don't know the song, you can watch the video here.
Read Camille Dungy’s poem “From the First, the Body Was Dirt” here. Dungy is a Capricorn. You can see her read a few other poems from Tropic Cascade at Split This Rock here.
Read Richard Siken’s poem “Scheherezade” here. Siken in an Aquarius.
Walt Whitman is a Gemini. You can read "We Two Boys Together Clinging" here and "Sometimes With One I Love" here.
Poetry Pyramid
06 Feb 2023
00:25:54
The queens play The Poetry Pyramid!
Pyramid is the collective name of a series of American television game shows that has aired several versions domestically and internationally. The original series was The $10,000 Pyramid, and it debuted on March 26, 1973.
You can read Jorie Graham’s poem “San Sepolcro” (the first poem in her second book, Erosion) here.
For more about Sally Mann's Body Farm project here. The Body Farm refers to the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee--Knoxville. Read more about the Center here.
Read Dorianne Laux's poem “Trying to Raise the Dead” here, first published in the Spring 1998 edition of Ploughshares.
Stop Lying
30 Jan 2023
00:29:52
STOP LYING is Aaron's new book of poetry! We discuss its themes, then James gives Aaron the STOP pop quiz. Stop Lying is just out from the Pitt Poetry Series. Buy it here!
Read Toi Derricotte's poem “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses” here. If you’d like to read more about “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” here’s a great article in the New Yorker where true-crime scholar Jean Murley discusses the history of it.
Matt Donovan’s poem “Shooting Justin Bieber and bin Laden in the Woods” in the Massachussets Review here. Visit Matt Donovan online at his website at: https://mattdonovanwriting.com
Eugenia Leigh’s poem “Monsters” from her first book, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows, can be read here. Her 2nd book, Bianca, is getting rave reviews! Order it now here. And visit Eugenia Leigh online at https://www.eugenialeigh.com
Survival Is in the Stories (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 2)
16 Jan 2023
00:30:45
The queens learn it takes courage to know what you know in this engrossing interview with the writer Lynn Melnick.
Dolly Parton's version of “I Will Always Love You” attained commercial success, twice reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart — first in June 1974, and again in October 1982, with her re-recording. Whitney Houston’s 1992 version also went to # 1. Parton recorded it again in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill, and that version peaked at # 15.
Read Dolly Parton's 1978 interview with Playboy here.
Watch the 1977 Parton interview with Barbara Walters (RIP) here.
Dolly sang “I Will Always Love You” for the very first time live on the Porter Wagoner Show. Watch that performance here.
Dolly had an impromptu duet, singing IWALY with Kelly Clarkson on Kelly's show. Watch the duet here.
Watch Dolly Parton perform a rousing rendition of “The Seeker” live here.
Watch here as Brandi Carlile tells us about writing to Dolly to ask her about covering her song “The Story,” and suggesting Dolly could “drop the key” on the song.
Read Dorianne Laux’s poem “Sunday” from Awake here.
Defiant Acts of Joy (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 1)
09 Jan 2023
00:29:31
We talk defiance, joy, and Dolly Parton's closet in Part 1 of our interview with poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick. Buy Lynn's books here!
Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, from the University of Texas Press's American Music Series/Spiegel & Grau Audio (October 2022). She is also the author of three poetry collections, Refusenik(2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books. She co-edited the volume Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Check out her website here.
Dolly Parton starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the movie Rhinestone (1984), a musical based on the 1975 hit song "Rhinestone Cowboy" written by Larry Weiss. Although a critical and financial failure, the film spawned two top 10 country hits for Parton.
Read more about Lucie Brock-Broido on her website here, at the Poetry Foundation here, or read her poem "Domestic Mysticism" here.
Watch the clip of Reese Witherspoon / Dolly Parton’s tea-and-closet moment referenced in the show (and in Lynn’s book).
Learn more (and donate to) the Sex Workers Project, a national organization advocating for the human rights of sex workers and others, at https://swp.urbanjustice.org
The Poems of Brad Pitt
28 Apr 2025
00:30:38
The ladies ask AI to write poems about Brad Pitt's butt. It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?
Read this excellent and moving piece about AI and grief by Jason Fagone: "The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I." details a grieving man's use of the AI called Project December in order to cope with the loss of his fiancé.
The Great Unsayable Sex Workshop
02 Jan 2023
00:29:42
Pour your New Year mimosas, cuz we're playing Roethke or Rothko before "Things You can Say in Workshop, and in Bed."
You can read a really terrific profile of Mark Rothko (b. 9/25/03) here.
Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan. Read more about him here or watch this 30-min documentary about his poetry and life.
Another short film made about Roethke (with clips of him reading from poems including : "The Adamant," "My Pappa's Waltz," "Dolor," "Cuttings, later," "The Walking," "The Sloth," "Elegy for Jane," "To An Amorous Woman," "In a Dark Time," "The Abyss," "Light Listened," "A Rouse for Wallace Stevens," "Gob Music," and "Once More for the Road") can be found here.
Rothko's Seagram Murals, commissioned in 1958 and finished around 1960, never hung in the Seagram Building, where the Four Seasons restaurant was located. To read more about Rothko’s Seagram Murals, click here.
You can visit the Rothko Chapel in Houston, or online here.
Rothko's Yellow # 10 (1957) which hangs in the Menil Collection in Houston is seen in a photograph here or here (scroll down to the 2nd yellow painting)
Aaron and James talk about becoming storytellers -- and survivors.
Marie Howe’s poem “Gretel, From a Sudden Clearing” was first published in Agni 1987, then in her first book, The Good Thief, selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series (Persea, 1988). The other poem that Aaron mentions from the book is "Isaac."
Watch a reading and conversation with Marie Howe here (~30 min). Poet Sandra Beasley hosts the conversation, which is sponsored by the Howard County (MD) Poetry & Literature Society.
Aaron's poem "After My Mother Apologized for My Childhood, We Went to Brunch" can be read here.
You can pre-order Aaron's book here or directly through the publisher.
You can watch one of the most terrific scenes in Steel Magnolias here. Truvey Jones says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" at the 8:30 mark. Watch the cast of Steel Magnolias interviewed on the Donahue show in 1989 here (~40 min)
You can listen to Ani DiFranco's fabulous recording of her song "Angry Anymore" here.
Watch the official music video for Debbie Gibson's “Lost in Your Eyes” official music video here.
Statements and Questions
05 Dec 2022
00:31:03
The queens get stately in this episode devoted to poetic queries and statements.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention by buying their books at an indie bookstore. We can recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-area bookseller.
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. It's essential reading.
You can read the entire Linda McCarriston poem, “Healing the Mare” here.
Read Chen Chen’s “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” (first published in Pank)here. Chen’s book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (selected by Jericho Brown) and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. Follow him on Twitter @chenchenwrites and visit his official website.
Read “Effort at Speech Between Two People” by Muriel Rukeyser here.
Watch Erika Meitner, Victoria Redel, and Patricia Smith here (~90 min)
Cortney Lamar Charleston’s book Dopplegangbangers is his second book, published by Haymarket Books in 2021. His first book is Telepathologies, winner of the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Visit his website here.
Read Larry Levis’s poem “In the City of Light" here.
Brenda Hillman's website can be visited here. You can read “First Thought” (from the book Bright Existence) here. And watch her read from multiple books in this 2013 reading here (~17 min).
Mark Doty writes about the class he shared with Brenda Hillman on his blog here.
World AIDS Day: Listening for My Name
01 Dec 2022
00:16:31
Aaron and James read work by writers we've lost to AIDS in this bonus episode.
According to the website for World AIDS Day, more than 38 million people are currently living with HIV. And, since 1984, more than 35 million people have died of HIV or AIDS-related illnesses, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history. Donate here.
Please consider buying the books of the poets we honor! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
We dedicated a Breaking Form Episode ("The Invisible Embrace") to Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995). Monette was the author of 4 novels, 3 books of nonfiction, and 4 books of poems, including a New and Selected Poems called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to AIDS on February 10, 1995.
Read more about Essex Hemphill here, and "American Wedding" (the poem Aaron reads during the show) here. He published 2 chapbooks and 2 books of poetry, and edited the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Hemphill died of complications from AIDS in 1995. Watch a short film written and performed by Hemphill called "From the Anacostia to the Potomac" here (~15 min)
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller (March 2, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress and writer who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters's early films, including Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. Mueller wrote columns and criticism for magazines and papers, and released several books as well, including a memoir, Garden of Ashes. A short film of remembrances about Mueller can be seen here. In April 2022, Semiotext(e) released Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories.
Iris de la Cruz inspired the foundation Iris House. You can read more about Iris and the foundation here. De la Cruz died in 1991, leaving a 15-year legacy of fighting for health rights for women/femmes living with HIV. Hear the entire essay James reads ("Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and AIDS”) in this video here. (TW for anachronistic language regarding sex work.)
David Michael Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist. He died in 1992, having written more than 10 books (including Close to the Knives, from which Aaron reads), exhibited his visual art all over the world, and directed at least two films.
Melvin Dixon was born on May 29, 1950 and died October 26, 1992. He authored two poetry collections: Change of Territory and the posthumous Love's Instruments. His novels were Vanishing Rooms and Trouble the Water. He translated The Collected Poems of Leopold Senghor. You can watch Danez Smith read a poem by Melvin Dixon here. Read more work by Dixon here.
Tim Dlugos was born in 1950 and died in 1990. Dlugos authored at least 8 books, including the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. Read more work here.
Doomsday (with C. Russell Price)
28 Nov 2022
00:30:10
C. Russell Price joins us for the Breaking Form Interview and talks doom, Designing Women, and why you should never read the comments on the internet.
Price is the author of Oh, You Thought This was a Date?!: Apocalypse Poems, which can be purchased from Northwestern University Press here. Their chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other, is available from Sibling Rivalry Press here.
Read here the entire text of How To Stay Politically Active While Fucking The Existential Dread Away (first published in Pank; scroll down).
Watch this short (~7 min) reading by C. Russell while they were a Lambda Literary Fellow.
Read Claudia Rankine’s Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry here. The Academy notes: “This conversation was presented by the Academy of American Poets at the Associated Writing Programs Conference on February 4, 2011. Claudia Rankine began her talk with a reading of Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change." She then presented the following dialogue.”
James’s favorite Jessica Simpson song is “I Wanna Love You Forever.” Watch the official music video for that song here (4:18).
4 Non Blondes was an American alternative rock band active from 1989-1994. Their only album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!, spent 59 weeks on the Billboard 200 and sold 1.5 million copies. You can watch the video for their smash ICONIC hit, “What’s Up,” here. Linda Perry wrote and sang lead on that hit.
Watch some of the best Golden Girls moments here (~43 min). And then watch some of Designing Women’s best moments here (~23 min).
Important resources for survivors of sexual assault and abuse can be found at RAINN. Peer resources for trans and nonbinary people can be found at the Trans Lifeline, which is divested from police and run entirely by trans folks.
When James says that gender is a copy for which there is no original, he is paraphrasing Judith Butler’s argument in her article, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” which argues that gender and sexuality are always performative and also always being performed. The repeated acts that encode gender are like a script, and that script gets copied and passed around, but there is no original script. “In other words,” Butler writes, “the naturalistic effects of heterosexualized genders are produced through imitative strategies; what they imitate is a phantasmatic ideal of heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect.” You can read the whole (short) essay here.
Personal Anthology
21 Nov 2022
00:31:24
The queens discuss the ICONIC poems that are near and queer to their hearts.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
You can read Carl Phillips's poem, "X," from In the Blood, here.
Listen to Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read the text here.
In an October 2022 NY Times profile of Sharon Olds, she declares she has a "real simile brain,” explaining further: “My brain sees in similes.” According to Sam Anderson (who wrote the profile), Olds "has never been comfortable saying definitively, as metaphors do, that something is something else. She ascribes this to her terrifying childhood experience of religion, the idea that blood was wine, that body was bread. To this day, she clings to the comforting distance of that “like.” Blood is like wine, yes; body is like bread, sure — in the same way that a poem is like a real experience but not the thing itself. In the same way that death is like birth, sorrow is like joy, a poet is like a host, an ending is like a beginning. To have a simile brain, as Olds does, is to live in a world of radical interconnection, a world in which nothing stands alone, nothing is ever only itself. And yet everything, in that vast network of mutual meanings, is allowed to remain exactly itself." You can read the whole profile here.
Also, we reference it enough in this show that here's a recording of Sharon Olds reading "I Go Back to May 1937."
The lecture of Linda Gregg's I reference is a craft talk she gave at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. It is titled "Craft of the Invisible." Listen to it here (~30 minutes).
Laura Kasischke's poem "The Ugliness" appears in Prairie Schooner (Vol. 76, Issue 1, 2002). You can watch her interviewed on a hometown vlog called "Around Town with Linda" here (~35 min).
Watch Rita Dove read "After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed" here (~3 minutes).
You can read Thomas Centolella's “The Orders” here.
You can read two of Jen Jabaily-Blackburn's poems in Couplet Poetry here.
Pet Project
14 Nov 2022
00:27:10
Hot goss about Victorian poet(s) Michael Field precedes a conversation about the deep loss of animals, and the intimacy, friendship, and love we share with them.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
The Humane Society suggests a few coping strategies for dealing with the loss of a loved pet:
Acknowledge your grief and give yourself permission to express it.
Don't hesitate to reach out to others who can lend a sympathetic ear. Do a little research online and you'll find hundreds of resources and support groups that may be helpful to you.
Write about your feelings, either in a journal or a poem, essay, or short story.
Call your veterinarian or local humane society to see whether they offer a pet-loss support group or hotline, or can refer you to one.
Prepare a memorial for your pet.
Frank Other Frank
07 Nov 2022
00:28:49
Frankly, our dears, all we want is boundless love for Frank O'Hara. We also discuss radical poetic embodiment, and ponder whether or not Dickinson's "Wild Nights" (269) is a fisting poem.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Frank O’Hara was born Francis Russell O'Hara in Baltimore, MD, but grew up near Worcester, MA. As a kid, he studied music in hopes of being a concert pianist. After a stint in the navy (shocking!) he went to Harvard, where Edward Gorey was his roommate. Imagine what those bunk sessions were like.
Read O’Hara’s “Ave Maria” here, and “you will have made the little tykes/ so happy....”
There's a film called "Wild Nights with Emily" (watch a 10 minute clip here), starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson. The film's description says it is informed by Dickinson's private letters and is a "timely critique of how women's history is rewritten."
Watch Ruth Stone read her poem "Where I Came From" here (~2 min).
For more about Beverly Pepper's work, watch this brief (2 min) video. Pepper died in 2020.
We reference an Instagram video post that Jorie Graham made about Pepper (her mother) making art. The post is captioned thusly: "My mother beginning to draw again with a partly mended broken arm. She holds one arm with the other for a moment, as if her wounded arm is a tool. Certainly she knew enough to know her wound was always her tool. She is so comfortable because Greg Whitmore is behind the camera, but, after a point, she is gone from us—all of us—I can see it as it happens—because she totally enters the work. It used to scare me as a child when she disappeared from this realm, and went into that one. It was strange to realize that there WAS an other realm into which one could go. Into which I could lose her. Of course, years later, I realized it was one of the greatest gifts she gave me. When she would leave me “alone” in this world knowing I had to find the other world in this one & find my way to it. Which is one’s fate. And one’s journey." You can see the post here. The video in the post was made in 2014 and can also be watched online here.
The Final Countdown
21 Apr 2025
00:38:59
The queens discuss and revise a recent list of "best poetry," adding other tops (& bottoms & verses & sides, you get the point, miss thing).
Read Craig Morgan Teicher's review of Glück's Faithful and Virtuous Night
Watch Tracy K. Smith's answer to "Does poetry matter" in this conversation with Tracey E. Hucks at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. If you'd like to see Smith read from her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Life on Mars, here's a particularly good one.
Just the tip-off! You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll win $50 in breakcoin (more crypto than currency). Polish up your high-heel cleats and get out your pompoms!
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Writing for the Ploughshares blog, Robert Anthony Siegel calls Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book “a progenitor of the fragmentary, nonlinear, hybrid-genre work....” Read the whole, short essay here.
You can watch Elaine Equi read four poems from Big Other here (~4.5 mins). And read more about this fabulous poet’s bio here.
Hear Plath read “November Graveyard” here (~1 min)
Hear Plath read “Poppies in October” here (~1 min)
You can read this fascinating essay about acquiring Plath’s table by David Trinidad here.
Listen to David talk with scholar Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, about the light and dark sequences in Plath’s life.
Watch Dorianne Laux read a very recent poem “What's Broken” here (~2 min)
You can attend virtually this fabulous Terrance Hayes reading at the University of Chicago (~1 hour)
Uh-Oh Plutonium!
24 Oct 2022
00:27:18
Uh-oh! The queens dish poetry playboys and punk rock goddesses! It's like an episode of Gossip Girl, but make it poetry....
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, known simply as Lord Byron, was immensely popular during his time. More info about him and his bisexuality can be found here. You can read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage here.
Buffering the Vampire Slayer is a Buffy podcast hosted by Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo. Each episode of the podcast also includes a new original song recapping a separate, glorious Buffy episode.
Anne Waldman’s website is http://www.annewaldman.org. She has a new book of essays, interviews, letters, and poems entitled Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2022).
Read this wonderful profile of Edward Said in the New Yorker.
Juliette Lewis describes how influential Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet was for her in this Spin interview (from 2009).
Plutonium is the element with the highest atomic number to occur in nature.
Watch Waldman give some advice to young poets here (~3 min).
The Invisible Embrace
17 Oct 2022
00:29:59
The queens discuss breaking open the closet doors through the work of Paul Monette.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995) was the author of at least 4 novels: Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978), The Gold Diggers (1979), Afterlife (1990), and Halfway Home (1991). He also wrote Sanctuary, a fable, which was illustrated by Vivienne Flesher and published posthumously in 1997.
His first nonfiction book, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) received a National Book Critic's Circle Award nomination and won a Lambda Literary Award. His second memoir is Becoming a Man; his third book of nonfiction is Last Watch of the Night, published in 1994.
His books of poems are The Carpenter at the Asylum, in 1975; No Witness (1981), and Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (1988). His New and Selected Poems is called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to aids on February 10, 1995.
The anthology that Aaron references is titled Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS. Aaron is right: Monette has 6 poems in that anthology, which was edited by Michael Klein.
The Best Little Boy in the World was published in 1973 under the pseudonym John Reid. The book was re-released in 1998 alongside its sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, under the author’s real name, Andrew Tobias.
Read an essay entitled “Paul Monette’s AIDS Poetry” at the Yale Review.