Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens select some very poetic bachelors and decide where they'd read them on their date.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.SHOW NOTES:Poets and poems mentioned include:"blessing the boats" by Lucille CliftonJoe Wenderoth's book, Letters to Wendy, "June 3, 1997"Li-Young Lee, "This Room and Everything In It"Frank O'Hara, "Having a Coke with You" Carolina Ebeid, "Reading Celan in a Subway Station"Raymond Antrobus, "Echo""Why Whales Are Back in New York City" by Rajiv MohabirArthur Sze, "At the Equinox"Jim Whiteside, "Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature"Ari Banias, "The Feeling"Steven Duong, "Ho Chi Minh City""Offerings Iphis Pledged as a Girl and Paid as a Boy" by Oliver Baez Bendorf James Ciano, “Coney Island Baby” Oak Morse, "A Portrait of Black Man Wrestling with His Secret Self (or, an inner cosplay ode to the singer Brandy" 

The queens descend upon Pittsburgh for a bittersweet (but dishy) tribute for Ed Ochester (1939-2023).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.SHOW NOTES:For more about the weekend events and about Ed Ochester's impact on American poetry, read here and here and here.The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press as part of the Pitt Poetry Series. Submissions are accepted March 1--April 30. For more about Southern Methodist University's Project Poetica, read here. Read more about the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature here. Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and (as he says on his website) "professional Black person." He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas—coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post and recently acquired by Univision and Gizmodo Media Group to be a vertical of The Root—and a columnist for GQ. Visit his website at https://www.damonjyoung.comAccording to CruisingGays.com, the Cathedral of Learning's 2nd and 8th floor bathrooms were popular cruising spots. The International Poetry Forum launched in 1966 with a reading that featured Archibald MacLeish. Since then, alumni of the series include nine Nobel Laureates, 14 Academy Award recipients, 28 U.S. Poets Laureate, 39 National Book Award winners, and 47 Pulitzer Prize winners.Joy Priest is the author of HORSEPOWER (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). Visit her website here.Check out Pittsburgh's City of Asylum here: https://cityofasylum.orgMonroeville is about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. Read Ed's poem titled "Monroeville"; several others can be found online at the Poetry Foundation here.Thanks to Nancy Krygowski and Jeffrey McDaniel and Terrance Hayes for putting together an incredible, moving weekend to a brilliant editor, mentor, and friend. We miss you, Ed.

The ladies pair poets together that prove complementary--or contrarian!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.SHOW NOTES:Visit Gary Jackson's website.In this interview, Marie Howe talks a bit about Lucille Clifton and feminist poetry.You can listen here to Carl Phillips read and engage in conversation after with Lia Purpura at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in February 2021. Read this great, short essay by Carl Phillips on Linda Gregg.Read Irene McKinney's poem "The Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson"Visit Jehanne Dubrow online at https://jehannedubrow.comRebecca Lindenberg's website is https://www.rebeccalindenberg.com. Read "Catalogue of Ephemera."Visit Erika Meitner's website. And read her poem "Jesus is the Reason." You can watch Ange Minko read her villanelle "Escape Architecture"  or read it here. Essex Hemphill's new and selected is called Love Is a Dangerous Word. Finally, Charlie Sheen does indeed identify as bisexual, and apparently there is a lot of ick in the new Netflix documentary about him. 

The judgy Judies play Toss or Keep to help their friend Tommy downsize his poetry library.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.SHOW NOTES:Some of the poems/poets/people mentioned in this episode include:Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man" which you can read here and listen to Creeley read here. And here's a roundtable discussion of the poem (~11 minutes, with a recording of Creeley reading it during a visit to Harvard).The poet Ai's book, Vice. Experience a video that includes her reading her poem "The Good Shepherd" here. Matthew Dickman, All-American PoemElizabeth (betsy) Cox, I Have Told You and Told You.   Read more about Cox's books with Penguin/Random House here. Loiuse Glück. "First Memory" is the last poem in Ararat. Watch this dramatic reading of the poem by Eisa Davis. Diane Gilliam Fisher, Kettle Bottom. Read more about Fisher here. Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake. Read the title poem here.Bob Hicok, Words for Empty, Words for Full. Read the poem "A Primer" mentioned in the show.James's poem "Portrait as My Mother as the Republic of Texas" appears in their first book, Now You're the Enemy (U of Arkansas, 2008). Read that poem and a short interview about it here. Watch this shady interview conducted with Paulina Porizkova about being fired by America's Next Top Model. The comic Beth Littlefield conducted very funny interviews forThe Daily Show in which her interviewer persona sent up Barbara Walters's interviews. In her interview of Dionne Warwick, she started one question this way:"In 1985, you participated in 'We Are the World,' which gathered together some of the top performers of our day, and Latoya Jackson." Watch Warwick fall out here, at the 2:30 mark.

The ladies get manifesto on that butt! (And mouth.) 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.SHOW NOTES:Read more about D.H. Lawrence here. Read William Carlos Williams's "Paterson" here and "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"  here.Jericho Brown writes about A.E. Housman in Mentor to Muse hereRead Dylan Thomas's poem "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"Here's a link to Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving But Drowning"For more about Keith Douglas, visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/keith-douglasAaron tosses off a quote from "Mayakovsky" by Frank O'Hara, which you can read here. Read poems by Louise Bennett here. Read Charles Olsen's "I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You"Here's Alan Dugan's "Internal Migration: On Being on Tour"Learn more about Judith Wright here.     

The queens summon lines designed to stop readers in their tracks. 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.SHOW NOTES:Sharon Olds says that early in her poetic career, when she'd send out her poems, "[t]hey came back often with very angry notes." Receipt here.  W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues", or "Stop all the clocks" appeared in his book Another Time. The poem experienced renewed popularity after being read in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). "Funeral Blues" has since been cited as one of the most popular modern poems in the United Kingdom. Watch the poem read in the movie here. Auden's "First Things First" appeared in The New Yorker in 1957. Hear Auden read the poem here. Watch the incredible Michael Sheen read Auden's "September 1, 1939" here. Receipts about Auden's struggle with the end are here. Read Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Mother" and listen here to Diane Seuss talk about this poem with us on Breaking Form. Read Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour" or listen to him read it here. (It'll be a memorable experience!)The poem we reference of Lynda Hull's is "Chiffon" which opens her book The Only World (HarperCollins 1995).Read Robinson Jeffers's "Birds and Fishes"Here's Frost's "Birches"Aaron Smith's poem is "Jennifer Lawrence" can be read here.Mark Doty's poem "Visitation" first appeared in The Paris Review. Aiden Shaw appeared in Roll in the Hay, but did not grace the sets of Big River.

The queens are joined by poetry crush Richard Siken, & talk heroes, rabbits, robots, & healing.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.SHOW NOTES:You can order I Do Know Some Things here. Visit Richard Siken's website here, and read work from the new book.Read Christopher Nelson's review of I Do Know Some Things here.Some interviews with Richard we can recommend:   This one in Adroit Journal   This one in BOMB Magazine   And this one in Gulf Coast from 2005, with James Allen Hall.Paratext is the text surrounding the main published text (like the book jacket copy, the blurbs, the cover text, etc).For more about War of the Foxes, check out this short video "Postcards from Richard Siken"Louise Glück (1943-2023) selected Siken's first book Crush for the Yale Series of Young Poets Prize. For more about Glück, including her period of silences, read here.For more about the tester straw we mention, click here.

The hosts get familiar with the poetry of three Hof(f)man(n)s--Carlie, Michael, and Richie.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.SHOW NOTES:Visit Carlie Hoffman on the web here. She is the author of three books, most recently One More Like This World (Four Way, 2025). We read these poems by Carlie:     Point of View Where Orpheus Makes a Pit Stop at a Fortune Teller in St. Germain     The Year Made Out of a Cut in Your Civilization     Panorama After Foreclosure     After Translating the Women of the Twentieth CenturyRead more about Michael Hofmann here. He is a Virgo born in Germany to a novelist and a teacher. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English." We read these poems by Michael:     Author, Author     Night     White Noise     Sentence     For AdamRichie Hofmann is the author of 2 books, in addition to the forthcoming The Bronze Arms (Knopf). Visit his website at https://www.richiehofmann.com. Read his poem "Male Beauty," which we quote in the episode, here. We read the following poems from Richie:     Breed Me     Arms     Young People     Keys to the City     Things that Are Rare   

How do poets write about place, and how does place shape a poet? Play along as the queens place these poems!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.SHOW NOTES: Poems/Poets mentioned in this week's show include:Traci Brimhall, "Shelter in Place." Visit Brimhall's website here. And you can watch her craft talk on revision here (1 hour). José Olivarez, "Eat the Rich." Watch Olivarez read his poem "Guapo" here. And visit him online: https://joseolivarez.com/Jayne Cortez, "I Am New York City"Peter Oresick, "When in 2009 the G20 Summit Convened in Pittsburgh"James Wright, "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio"Adrian Matejka, "16 Bars Poetica." Listen to a fascinating reading and talk Matejka gave at Bread Loaf in 2024 on his newest book, Last on His Feet, a graphic novel about the boxer Jack Jackson. Matejka's website is https://www.adrianmatejka.com/ Megan Pinto, "Tonight it is Snowing in Rome." Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024). Visit her online at https://www.meganpinto.com/. And watch her give a reading for Massachusetts Review.Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"Denis Johnson's "Now" Watch Johnson read in 2016 at Cornell here (~40 min).Naomi Shihab Nye, "Jerusalem"

Touchstones part 1 hit so good, we decided to go another round!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.Poems mentioned in this episode:Tomas Transtromer: "The Name" (translated by May Swenson with Leif Sjöberg)Cornelius Eady: "My Heart" Eady also turned Brutal Imagination into a play, too, and you can read the Variety review here.Wayne Koestenbaum's "Rhaposdy" from Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender. Read a review of the book and check out Koestenbaum's website here. Lucia Perrillo: "Skin" Read more about Perrillo. Or watch her read from Inseminating the Elephant, which won the 2010 Bobbit Prize, at the Library of Congress here.Visit Dorianne Laux's website here. James asked folks to name their touchstone poems (with links) and this Facebook post was born..... check out some other incredible poetry touchstones!