Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens talk bad words and get Sharon Stoned with Lynn Emanuel in part 2 of the interview.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books, including Lynn Emanuel's new one, from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Lynn Emanuel is the author of six books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly—, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It:  New and Selected Poems, and most recently Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. She is Profosser Emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh.Her work has been featured many times in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a poetry editor for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a judge for the National Book Awards.She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a fellowship from the Ranieri Foundation and the National Poetry Series.Read Lynn's poem “Homage to Sharon Stone." Sharon Stone is a Pisces (March 10), which is also Lynn’s sign (Mar. 14).Deborah Bogen’s essay “Emanuel’s Elegies” can be found in Plume here. Check out Bogen’s website here:  https://www.deborahbogen.netSharon Olds's baseball poem is collected in This Sporting Life: Contemporary American Poems About Sports and Games, published by Milkweed in 1987.The Writer’s Almanac asked Sharon Olds to give some advice to young poets, and she said: "Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can — not more than the people around you but not so much less." More of the interview can be found here.Watch Lynn talk about some of her favorite/influential poets here. 

The ladies pop a poetry pill with guest Lynn Emanuel in part one of the interview.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Lynn Emanuel is the author of six books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly—, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It:  New and Selected Poems, and most recently Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing. She is Profosser Emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been featured many times in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a poetry editor for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a judge for the National Book Awards.  She has been, as well,  the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a fellowship from the Ranieri Foundation and the National Poetry Series. When Fernando Pessoa died in 1935, he left a huge body of work under his own name and under the name of other poets--men he not only invented but provided with separate and distinct personalities, personal histories and biographies, religious beliefs, political points of view, and aesthetic styles. There were three major heteronyms: Alberto Cairo, Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. Pessoa explained: “Pseudonymous works are by the author in his own person, except in the name he signs; heteronymous works are by the author outside his own person. They proceed from a full-fledged individual created by him, like the lines spoken by a character in a drama he might write.” For more about Pessoa and his heteronyms, read this fabulous essay in Lit Hub or watch this 30-min BBC Radio 3 profile of the author here.  Read this interview with Lynn conducted by Mathias Svalina in Blackbird.Watch Lynn Emanuel read with Lucia LoTempio and Lauren Russell for the Hudson Valley Writers' Center (90 min). 

The divas are telling the truth and shaming some devils in this tea-spilling episode about horrible men with wide readerships.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Here's the article that gave us so many receipts.Claire Dederer's book is Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. You can read a part of the book that was published earlier in The Paris Review.Adele Morales was Norman Mailer's second wife. She divorced him two years after he stabbed her. Mailer was married six times and had nine children. According to his obituary in The Independent, his "relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small – though perhaps that was where the aggression originated."Sally Hayes and Holden Caulfield do go on a date in Catcher in the Rye—they end up seeing a play and then going ice-skating, where Holden tells her she's phony, then says she's a "royal pain in the ass," then asks her to run away. His near-shouting and impulsiveness scares her.  Holden leaves her at the skating rink, and Sally says she'll find her own way home.For more about Gyllenhall and "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" which contains the keychain reference, go here.We reference Frank O'Hara's famous poem "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed]" and you can read the poem here.  Read the original article about Ta-Nehisi Coates attending the school board meeting at which the banning of his book Between the World and Me. 

Our intrepid pansies talk  prompts--but first up it's a scandal of grave proportions.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Read this fascinating consideration of Elizabeth Siddal in Lucinda Hawksley's "The Tragedy of Art's Greatest Supermodel" for the BBC. And you can view some of Lizzie Siddal's paintings/drawings here: https://lizziesiddal.com/portal/lizzies-art/ A bit more about Sidda: Shel became an artist in her own right and was the only woman to exhibit at an 1857 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition—the first exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—which took place in London and was an alternative to the restrictive Royal Academy summer exhibition. A London newspaper review of the exhibition mentioned Siddal by name: “Her drawings display an admiring adoption of all the most startling peculiarities of Mr. Rossetti’s style, but they have nevertheless qualities which entitle them to high praise.” The reviewer also expressed admiration for the “high, pure, and independent feeling” of Siddal’s rendering of human faces in her drawings. Her painting, Clerk Saunders, was purchased by an American collector in attendance. Significant collections of her artworks can be found at Wightwick Manor and the Ashmolean. Read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (the title poem of her first published book) here.  If you're interested in learning a bit more about Christina Rossetti's drawings and verse, watch this short and fabulous video exhibition. Here's the article Aaron references which ranks flavored lube. You're welcome. Learn more about Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings here (Tate). Read his poem "Jenny" (one of the poems he buried with Siddal).

The queens talk music, monsters, and masturbation with Diannely Antigua.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative. You can buy Ugly Music by Diannely Antigua by clicking here. Diannely Antigu is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her second poetry collection Good Monster is forthcoming with Copper Canyon Press in 2024. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry and is currently the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive that title.Diannely reads "Diary Entry # 16 About Using My Body" from Good Monster. The poem was originally published in Muzzle Magazine and you can read it here. Two poems Diannely mentions but doesn't read: "Praise to the Boys" in the Paris Review &"Chronically" in Pangyrus.You can read the entire Raque Dalton poem "Like You" ("Como Tú") translated by Jack Hirschman here.Go here to listen to Diannely read poems and be interviewed on Was I in a CultRead a rave review of Ugly Music in Muzzle Magazine.Watch Diannely tell stories and read in the Creative Mornings  series (~25 min).Here's another terrific recording of Diannely Antigua reading at City of Asylum for "Latinx and Proud" series (~15 min). 

The gays gaze into their crystal balls and predict the National Book Awards.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Poets mentioned in this episode include:Watch Gabrielle Bates read for Alaska Quarterly Review hereWatch Kyle Dargan read at the Cork Poetry Festival from Panzer Hertz: A Live Dissection (3:30-24:00)Watch Timothy Donnelly read his poem "Diet Mountain Dew" with musicWatch Michael Dumanis read his poem "The Empire of Light" hereWatch Meg Fernandes read 4 poems from I Do Everything I'm Told here (with Adrienne Raphel; ~1 hr)Watch Katie Ferris read from Standing in the Forest of Being Alive (with Ilya Kaminsky) hereRigoberto Gonzalez reads as part of Poets House's Hard Hat Reading Series from To the Boy Who Was Night hereWatch Jorie Graham's book launch for To 2040 (~1 hour)Terrance Hayes took part in this reading and conversation with Ocean Vuong & Claudia Rankine here (~1.5 hrs). Terrance guested on eps 98 & 99Eugenia Leigh reads from Bianca (with Jennifer S. Cheng) at Green Apple Books in San Francisco here. You can also watch Leigh lead a free writing workshop about zuihitsu hereWatch Randall Mann read his poem "Straight Razor" (included in Deal: New and Selected Poems). Randy was our guest on ep 96Paisley Rekdal talks about West: A Translation here (~50 min)Watch sam sax read "Everyone's an Expert at Something" hereRead Charif Shanahan's "On the Overnight from Agadir" in Trace EvidenceBrenda Shaughnessy reads from Tanya hereWatch Monica Youn read from From From  here (~30 min). Read "Against Imagism" in The New Yorker her

Our intrepid hosts talk Deep Image poetics and nearly break into rosebud....er blossom.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling coop.The word (and journal name) Trobar comes from the Old Catalan verb trobar, from Vulgar Latin tropāre, a verb presumably derived from Latin tropus, of Greek origin—for "to find." It transforms in French to also take on "to invent, to compose" and thus forms the root of "troubador."Watch Ellen Bass read her poem "Any Common Desolation" (~2 min) or read it for yourself here.Check out Cola Franzen's translation of Lorca's poem "La Guitarra." Cola Franzen (February 4, 1923 – April 5, 2018) was an American writer and translator. Among her awards are the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the Gregory Kolovakos Award from PEN American Center for expansion of Hispanic Literature to an English-language audience.Read James Wright's poem "A Blessing" or watch him read it here (at the 33:15 mark).According to Dr. Kristin Mark, a sex and relationships researcher and a professor at the University of Kentucky, ejaculated sperm can travel up to 28 mph. It is, as you can imagine, difficult to measure.

The ladies get a little bit Alexis in this episode that mixes poetry quotes with Alexis Rose quotes from Schitt's Creek.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling coop.Read reviews of The Wendys on Allison Benis White's website here. Preorder Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss (out in March 2024) here. Watch this 2011 reading by Mark Bibbins here (~8 min).Too Bright to See is Linda Gregg's first book. Aaron references her fourth book, Chosen by the Lion.If you'd like to read the back story about "Leather and Lace," the song Aaron and I reference in the episode, it's worth your time here. For more about the Devil Wears Prada prank meme, click here. A public celebration of Minnie Bruce’s life will take place in the near future. Details will be posted on her social media and on her website: https://minniebrucepratt.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  here.Read James Wright's poem "A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack."

The queens swear to tell the hole truth, and nothing butt the truth to commemorate the 100th episode of Breaking Form.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Read Carl Phillips's "As from a Quiver of Arrows." Or see Summit Chakraborty read it here (~3 min).If you want to know more about Bruce Weigl, check out the Breaking Form Episode "The Impossible."  You can also read "Song of Napalm" here or watch Weigl read it here (~3 min).Ellen Bryant Voigt's newest book is Collected Poems (WW Norton).The poet Ed Smith took his own life in 2005 at age 48; before that, he published two books, “Fantasyland” and “Tim’s Bunnies” (1988). David Trinidad edited the book “Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith." Trinidad wrote a remembrance of Smith here. And David Ulin wrote a retrospective of Ed Smith's work for the LA Times.Watch this World AIDS Day commemoration that celebrates the works of Walta Borawski and Robert Ferro (recorded December 1, 2022)You can learn more about the incredible poet Christopher Gilbert here. We particularly recommend you stop your day and read his poem "How the Stars Understand Us"Read Thomas James's bio and peruse some of his poems here.  I've always really loved this essay on James's work by Lucie Brock-Broido and can't recommend it enough to you.You can read Aaron's poem "After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong about the Sadness of Men Who Love Men" as well as a little essay about the poem here on the Poetry Society of America's website. Also, go read Aaron's poem "Sissy" that James mentions loving. You can read James's poem "A Fact Which Occurred in America" here (though imagine it in tercets) and view the George Dawe painting referenced in the poem here. Explore Jill Alexander Essbaum's fabulous work here. Watch the fight scene in Mommie Dearest here if you don't get the "I am not one of your fans" reference. It's 3.5 minutes of high (but violent) camp.

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 PoetryTwentieth- Century American Poetry is the 2004 guide and reference book published by Christopher MacGowan, a leading scholar on William Carlos Williams.Read "Looking for Jonathan" by Jon Anderson, the title poem from his 1968 volume, and read more about the poet here. Norman Dubie died in February. He was an Aries (April 10, 1945) . Read his poem "An Annual of the Dark Physics."  You can watch him read his poem "The Sparrow" here. (~3.5 min)Read Steve Orlen's poem "In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas." Russell Westbank III plays basketball for the LA Clippers. The “Clippers” were named in 1978, when the franchise moved from Buffalo to San Diego, to represent the sailing ships in the bay; a “clipper” is a merchant sailing ship. The team kept the name when they moved to L.A. in 1984.Psuedacris Crucifer is the scientific name of a small chorus frog, also known as the spring peeper. Terrance's poem of the same name appears here in The New Yorker.Read Wanda Coleman's "American Sonnet 91" and buy her book of sonnets, Heart First into this Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets, with intro by Mahogany L. Browne.