Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens talk more True Crime poems in an episode so good, it'll feel like you're breaking the law!Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Read Natasha Trethewey's "Imperatives for Carrying on in the Aftermath." Listen to Trethewey interviewed by NPR here--it's a riveting and utterly heartbreaking story.You can read Sharon Olds's poem "Photographs Courtesy of the Fall River HistoricalSociety" in the journal Calliope here and browse the Borden house crime scene photos reference in the poem here. The poem is from Satan Says.  You can also read her poem "Death of Marilyn Monroe," from The Dead & the Living.We mention Allison Benis-White's haunting and beautiful book of poems (about 5 Wendy's, including Wendy Coffield--the Green River Killer's first victim). Buy it here!We also mention Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's book Slamming Open the Door--which you can also buy (of course from an indie!) here. Watch Mark Doty read his powerful poem "Charlie Howard's Descent." Charlie Howard, as Mark explains, was thrown off a bridge to his death in a 1985 hate crime.For more about the Smiley Face Murders (not to be confused with the Smiley Face Killer), listen to this Crime Junkie episode.Watch bigot Anita Bryant pied by Tom Higgins. You can read James's poem about it, "On Dark Days, I Imagine My Parents' Wedding Video," from The Iowa Review Online.

The queens play poetry detective in this episode devoted to true crime-inspired poems.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.You can check out the Killer Psyche podcast here, hosted by  retired FBI agent Candice DeLong.You can read more about Kenneth Patchen as well as some of his poems here. It's worth taking a look at the poem Aaron reads ("The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves") since the visual experience is part of the poem's drama.You can read the entirety of Browning's The Ring and the Book for free. You can also experience an audio play of the book (serially; start here.)Check out more poems from Maggie Nelson's Jane: A Murder here. Julia Shiota's piece "The Humanity of True Crime's Victims" (here on the Ploughshares blog) uses Nelson's Jane: A Murder and the subsequent book about the trial, The Red Parts, to discuss the ethics in true crime.Read Monica Youn's "Stealing the Scream." Read more about the true story behind the poem here and here.You can listen to recorded calls made by the Golden State Killer here.Read Linda McCarriston's "To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons" from Eva-Mary.

The queens' Kissing Booth is now open! We talk poetic kisses and then read some recent poetry crushes.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Read more about Rimbaud here, and watch Patti Smith's video about preparing for "Rimbaud Month" here (5min).To really understand the life & times Akhmatova lived through, watch Semeon Aranovitch's film The Anna Akhmatova File (in Russian with subtitles ~70 min) here. The actor and singer Jonathan Groff is a spitter and you can read the receipts here. Watch this video comprising a short bio about Jane Hirshfield and then a videorecording of Hirshfield reading "For What Binds Us." Watch Tomas Transtromer read his poem "Allegro"  (2 min). Read an English translation of "Allegro" here.Watch Cher perform her song "DJ Play a Christmas Song" on Berlin's Wetten Dass here and at the 2023 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade here.If you don't know much about Dorothy Parker, here's a great video to get you started.Here's Mariah Carey saying about J Lo, "I don't know her" here. The unfolding is here.For more about Louise Glück's essay "The Forbidden" and the shade she casts on Linda McCarriston and Sharon Olds, read on here. And W i lli am L0g an receipts about shoeshine kits can be had here. Read William Ward Butler's "I Got that Dog in Me" here & order his chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press here. Read Gustavo Hernandez's "Summer, You're a Boneyard," picked by Diane Seuss for Poem-A-Day. Buy Flower Grand First from Tide Moon Press here. Visit Ruth Madievsky's website. Read her poem "In High School" here.  Buy Emergency Brake here.Read Amy Thatcher's poem "Road Kill" here and her poem "Our Lady of Sorrows" here.

The queens get stuffed as they rehash Thanksgivings past. No poetry, but this episode does make hilarity rhyme with vulgarity. After all, a Breaking Form Thanksgiving special wouldn't be complete without talk of clitoris, lesbian octogenarians, and Listerine cocktails. Unbuckle your seatbelts and your pants, cuz this is a messy wild ride -- definitely not for the feint of heart!

Snap out of it! The queens use Cher to revise some poems and the result is ICONIC!Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. You can hear Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read it for yourself here. (The show was taped before LG's untimely death.)Read "Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell HolmesRead "Homage to my hips" by Lucille CliftonYou can read Alexandra Teague's excellent poem "Language Lessons" here. Tess Gallagher's "I Stop Writing the Poem" can be found here. Go here to read Dorothea Lasky's poem "If you can't trust the monitors"Here's Robert Lowell's poem "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket"Finally, we mention Hart Crane's poem "Chaplinesque"Here are two clips from Moonstruck"Meeting outside the opera"I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!" 

The queens play "Just Jane!" featuring a jackpot of J. Kenyon and J. Mead poems. James just can't jank a jackdaw but refuses to be jaded.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.Kenyon published four volumes of poetry during her life: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990), and Constance (1993), and, as translator, Twenty Poems of Anna Akmatova (1985). A fifth book, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, appeared in 1996.Jane Mead was the author of five collections of poetry: The Lord and the General Din of the World (1996), The House of Poured-Out Waters (2001), The Usable Field (2008), Money Money Money Water Water Water (2014), World of Made and Unmade (2016), and To the Wren: Collected and New Poems (2019).Here are the Kenyon poems we discuss:Having It Out with MelancholyPrivate BeachClimbThe ShirtOtherwiseYou can listen to Jane Kenyon read "Otherwise" here.Here are the Kenyon poems we discuss:The Argument Against UsThe MemoryIn the Parking Lot at the Junior College on the Eve of a Presidential ElectionPassing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway EightyIf you need a refresher on Brenda Hillman's "Male Nipples"Read Amy Thatcher's poem "Road Kill" in SWWIM. 

The gorls chop up some gorgeous lines before playing Mean, Queen, or Blue Jean.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."It was a time when they were afraid of him" is from Jimmy Santiago Baca's poem "Ancestor""An opening to a story should be / unremarkable" is from Catherine Chen's " My Poem Asks to Be Read Right to Left""Things happen when you drink too much mescal" is from Moira Egan's "Bar Sonnet # 11"Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Gitanjali 11" begins: "Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship.""Crickets are stitching the afternoon" is how Rosanna Warren begins her poem "Boletus" "Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high" is the start of Patricia Smith's poem "Siblings""I will die in Paris, on a rainy day," writes Cesar Vallejo at the beginning of his "Black Stone Lying on a White Stone" "Monterosa, your body is dead on Avenue A." is from Jack Agueros's "Sonnet for Angelo Monterosa""We kept war in the kitchen" is the beginning of Reetika Vazirani's  "Dream of the Evil Servant""This did not happen" begins Thylias Moss's poem "Did Not Happen"Watch "10 Things Joseph Sikora Cannot Live Without" from GQ here.Check out Forbes's list of The Most Comfortable Heels That Consistently Earn Top ReviewsPattiann Rogers is the author of at least 17 books, including most recently Flickering, just published in April of 2023. Read this interview with her in Lit HubThe Frank O'Hara line I reference in the game "Queen, Mean, or Blue Jean" is "Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed" which you can read here.For more tea about Virginia Woolf and her paid domestic workers, read this review.

The queens put the ass in astonishment & tease out favorite  moments in poems.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Read Alicia Ostriker's "Locker-Room Conversation"Check out Rita Dove's poem "Afer Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed."Anne Carson's "X. Sex Question" from Autobiography of Red can be read here. Read "The Glass Essay" from Glass, Irony and God here.Read Mark Doty's poem "With Animals" from My Alexandria. Check out "Days of 1981" here. And go (re)read "Atlantis" here.You can read Olena Kalytiak Davis's poem “Resolutions In A Parked Car” here. The line "Explain Jesus" is actually a whole stanza unto itself, and it appears in the poem, "I Am Only Now Beginning to Answer Your Letter" from And Her Soul Out of Nothing.Read "Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa, the final poem in his book Dien CanDau (Wesleyan, 1988). 

Aaron and James are joined by special guests to pay tribute to Maureen Seaton.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Read Maureen Seaton's obituary to learn more about her life.You can read poems & conversations with Maureen in the South Florida Poetry Journal here. Watch Maureen read poetry for the Alaska Quarterly Live Reading Series (~12 min).

The queens leave you breathless in antici....pation with this crafty episode focused on enjambed lines.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.      James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Please consider buying your books from Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist and queer indie bookselling cooperative.Read Susan Mitchell's poem "The Dead" which is indeed in her first book, The Water Inside the Water (Wesleyan, 1983 and reprinted by Harper Perennial, 1994).Here's the text of "Wake" by Tess Gallagher. You can watch her read the poem and a few others here (she reads "Wake" around the 11:10 mark)Carl Phillips's poem "The Gods Leaving" is in his book Pastoral (Graywolf, 2002)For the receipts regarding Miley Cyrus and Vickie Lawrence, or to read more from that interview, go here. Read the start of Jorie Graham's essay "Some Notes on Silence" which James quotes in the episode.You can read Andrea Cohen's poem "Ghosting" in the Atlantic if the spirit moves you.Here's a link to read Jane Mead's "In Need of a World" (from The Lord and the General Din of the World)Jean Valentine's poem "This Side" appears in her book Little Boat.