Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Get on your spurs & chaps and join our country queens down at the poetry gay bar!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.Watch Miranda Lambert calling out some selfie-takers and the ladies of The View talking about it. And watch her sing "Tin Man" here.Watch Jennifer L. Knox read "Crushing It" here.Maybe the most memorable Tammy Wynette reference is this one from Sordid Lives. "He looked just like Tammy....in the early years," one character says about her brother."Billy Collins is to good poetry what Kenny G is to Charlie Parker" reads this scathing pan of the poet. You can watch Richard Howard read from his poems here (~60 min).Anne Carson is in conversation with Lannan Foundation's Michael Silverblatt here (30 min).Terrance HayesRead B.H. Fairchild's "A Starlit Night" from 32 Poems here.Read "Chopin in Palma," the Susan Mitchell poem in Best American Poetry 2023 (first published in Harvard Review) here. Listen to Mark Doty talk all things Whitman (~50 min)You can watch Frank Bidart read his serial-killer poem "Herbert White" here (~8 min)Here's an amazing tribute to Lucille Clifton organized by SAG-AFTRA, with readings by Geena Davis, Tantoo Cardinal, Isabella Gomez, Mark St. Cyr, Candace Nicholas Lippman, Max Gail, Nicco Annan; Lynne Thompson;  Sidney Clifton; Madeline di Nonno; and  Rochelle Rose. (~70 min)Read Matthew Dickman's poem "Grief."Here's Susan Mitchell's CV.

The queens hypothesize that erotic/love poems must always have one "f*ckstick." 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.We talk about the difficulty of language and words that “shouldn’t” be in poems in Crimes Against Diction, episode 95. Read “Dick Pics” by Sarah Tsiang.Read Jack Gilbert’s “Michiko Dead."Linda Gregg, “Kept Burning and Distant” from The Sacraments of Desire.Read H.D.'s “Sea Poppies."Read Sharon Olds's, “The Pope’s Penis”Read Adrienne Rich's "The Floating Poem" in Twenty-One Love Poems. Kim Addonizio's poem “Penis Blues” can be read here.  Louise Glück's “The Encounter” can be found here and is from The Triumph of AchillesRead Emma Lazarus's “Assurance”We reference Russell Edson's poem “Conjugal” and Mark Strand's “Courtship”Read Jill Alexander Esbaum's awesomely funny “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica” Wallace Stevens’s first book of poems is Harmonium, published by Knopf in 1923. A Palm at the End of the Mind is a Selected Poems and a play.Lynn Melnick's third book of poetry is Refusenik. You can watch Lynn read from it and talk about it with David Ulin of the New York Public Library. Watch James Hoch talk about Miscreants and the backstory behind "Bobby" here (~17 min mark).  You can read the Publisher's Weekly review of Miscreants here. Donika Kelly’s first book is called Bestiary. Her second book is called The Renunciations pub’d by Graywolf. Watch Lucas Mann read "Conversion" from Matthew Olzmann's book Constellations.Read Charles Olsen's essay “Projective Verse."

Get vasodilated with the queens in this episode filled with heady poetry games.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.Watch fabulously messy Willam Belli, from RuPaul's Drag Race and host of the popular game "Poppers Slap," review poppers here.Read this appreciation of Gwendolyn Brooks by Christian Wiman.Watch Sharon Olds at the National Book Awards 2022 finalist reading (~5 min). Louise Glück’s most recent book is Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, a 64-page fablesque novella publishedin 2022 by FSG. Read a review of it here.Carl Phillips reads Linda Gregg’s poem “It Is the Rising I Love” from The Paris Review (~2 min). Listen to Jorie Graham read “Why” from To 2040.If you want to read Jack Kerouac’s haiku, check them out here.Angelo Nikolopoulos’s website is https://www.angelonikolopoulos.com. Catch a reading with Angelo, Jameson Fitzpatrick, and Monica McClure here.

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.