Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens get between the covers with Terrance Hayes ahead of the release of new works of poetry and prose on July 18.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Writing in Lit Hub, Rebecca Morgan Frank says the poems have "a gift for telling stories . . .  in acts of queer survival." Pre-Order Terrance Hayes's new books, out on July 18.So to Speak: Poems Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American PoetryTerrance 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. 

The queens bust out their microscopes and examine poetic DNA. Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. Publisher's Weekly calls the book "visceral, tender, and compassionate."James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. "Romantic Comedy," writes Diane Seuss in her judge's citation, "is a masterpiece of queer self-creation."Some of the writers discussed include:Terrance Hayes (who'll join us for the Breaking Form interview next week!), author of So to Speak, which will be out July 18 and is available for pre-order.Listen to Etheridge Knight read "Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane" & "The Idea Of Ancestry" here (~6 min). Galway Kinnell reads his poem "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" here (~2 min).Read more about Herbert Morris here, and read his fabulous poem "Thinking of Darwin" here.Read Thomas James's title poem "Letters to a Stranger." Then read this beautiful reconsideration of the poet by Lucie Brock-Broido, who used to photocopy James's poems and give them to her classes at Columbia, before Graywolf republished 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.Read Lynn Emmanuel's "Inside Gertrude Stein" here.Read Anna Akhmatova's "Lot's Wife" here. Read Osip Mandelstam's "I was washing at night out in the yard" here. 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.

The queens are joined by Randall Mann to discuss discomfort, cage-dancing, and how to deal. Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Randall Mann is the author most recently of DEAL: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2023). Read a review of the book published here in On the Seawall. And buy the book from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie bookseller, here. Randy mentions his poem "In the Beginning" which has an epigraph from Laura Jensen. You can read that poem, and a few others, online here. Laura Jensen is the author of 3 books. Carnegie Mellon republished her second book, Memory, in 2006. You can read her poem "Heavy Snowfall in a Year Gone Past" here. And check out this reconsideration of Memory in The Rumpus here.Check out this essay on Gwendolyn Brooks's formalism and her literary reputation by A. Van Jordan on the Best American Poetry blog here.Read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" here, or watch John Murillo read the poem here.North of Boston is Robert Frost's second book of poems. It contains 17 poems, including "Mending Wall" and "The Death of the Hired Man.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.

The queens talk diction, the political history of language, and naked octogenarians.Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here.  Buy our books:Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Words that we identify as "forbidden" (in case you want to try to write poem/s with them!): verboten; beautiful; the body; dick; cicada; bougainvillea; filament; "Z was all X"; Dear Reader"; dead deer; soul; panties.You can hear Plath read her poem “Lady Lazarus” here.You can read James's poem "Portrait of My Mother as Rosemary Woodhouse" here.Read CP Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka” (translated by Edmund Keeley) here.Aaron references an article he's read about why the word "panties" is objectionably sexist. And while it may not be this one from The Atlantic, it's still an awesome read. The author, Sarah Fentem, writes: "I've heard several people refer to the word as "infantilizing." The addition of the suffix "-ies" (or in the singular form, "-y") converts the word into a diminutive. Literally: "little pants." .... In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of "panties" is from a 1908 set of instructions for making doll clothes." Read the rest of the article here. 

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 COMEDY is 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.Matthew Zapruder’s suicide poem was published as the April 18, 2023 Poem-a-Day.For more about banned poets, visit the website we use from the Academy of American Poets.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. 

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 COMEDY is 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 DayFrank O'Hara, Lunch PoemsDavid Trinidad, Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera ; Swinging on a StarFranny Choi, Soft Sciencesam sax, MadnessDanez Smith, HomieYou can read a short excerpt of Nin Andrews's The Book of Orgasms at her website here. Jennifer L. Knox, Crushing ItCamille Guthrie, Diamonds                               Michael Dumanis, My Soviet Union Louise GluckYou 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 ClampittEmily DickinsonEdgar Allen PoeRobert Lowelle.e. cummingsHenry Wadsworth LongfellowGertrude SteinJohn 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 PoundSara Teasdale, whom you can read more about here. Hart CraneRobert FrostWalt WhitmanLucille CliftonThomas HardyJohn KeatsMarilyn Chin's sixth book of poetry, Sage, was released by Norton in May 2023.Mark DotyPatrick Phillips, whose most recent book is Song of the Closing Doors (Knopf, 2022),. Visit Phillips's website. 

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 COMEDY is 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).  

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 COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.We mention the following poets and books:Sharon OldsBalladz The Gold CellThe Dead and the LivingBlood, Tin, StrawStag's LeapOdesThe Unswept Room Terrance HayesAmerican Sonnet for My Past and Future AssassinWind in a Box LightheadHow to Be DrawnAnne SextonLive or DieTransformations45 Mercy StreetLouise GlückFirstborn The Triumph of AchillesMeadowlandsArarat. "The Untrustworthy Speaker" that James references appears in Ararat and can be read here.AvernoVita Nova; James quotes one of the title poems, "Vita Nova" (read it here). Watch Louise Glück read with Katie Peterson here (~1 hour).Mark DotySource. 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 AlexandriaTurtle, Swan. Read the title poem here. Anne CarsonAutobiography of RedGlass, Irony and GodFloatNoxMarie HoweThe Kingdom of Ordinary TimeWhat the Living DoThe Good ThiefMagdalene 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.

The queens talk poetry through the lyrics of our diva & icon: Cher, who'll turn 77 on May 20.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 COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Cher appeared twice on the show Will & Grace — once in 2000, when Jack mistook her for a drag-queen Cher impersonator, and again in an appearance in 2002's season 4 finale, where she advises Jack" "Follow your bliss."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.  

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 COMEDY is 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.Wednesday Addams was played by Christina Ricci in the movies The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). See the lemonade stand scene here and the "I'd pity him" scene here. 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.