Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Aaron and James talk about becoming storytellers -- and survivors.Marie Howe’s poem “Gretel, From a Sudden Clearing” was first published in Agni 1987, then in her first book, The Good Thief, selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series (Persea, 1988). The other poem that Aaron mentions from the book is  "Isaac."Watch a reading and conversation with Marie Howe here (~30 min). Poet Sandra Beasley hosts the conversation, which is sponsored by the Howard County (MD) Poetry & Literature Society. Aaron's poem "After My Mother Apologized for My Childhood, We Went to Brunch" can be read here.You can pre-order Aaron's book here or directly through the publisher.You can watch one of the most terrific scenes in Steel Magnolias here.  Truvey Jones says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" at the 8:30 mark. Watch the cast of Steel Magnolias interviewed on the Donahue show in 1989 here (~40 min)You can listen to Ani DiFranco's fabulous recording of her song "Angry Anymore" here.  Watch the official music video for Debbie Gibson's “Lost in Your Eyes” official music video here. 

The queens get stately in this episode devoted to poetic queries and statements.Please consider supporting the poets we mention by buying their books at an indie bookstore. We can recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-area bookseller.The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. It's essential reading.You can read the entire  Linda McCarriston poem, “Healing the Mare” here.Read Chen Chen’s “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” (first published in Pank) here. Chen’s book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (selected by Jericho Brown) and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. Follow him on Twitter @chenchenwrites and visit his official website.Read “Effort at Speech Between Two People” by Muriel Rukeyser here.Watch Erika Meitner, Victoria Redel, and Patricia Smith here (~90 min)Cortney Lamar Charleston’s book Dopplegangbangers is his second book, published by Haymarket Books in 2021. His first book is Telepathologies, winner of the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Visit his website here.Read  Larry Levis’s poem “In the City of Light"  here.Read Jennifer L. Knox’s poem “Old Women Talking About Death” here. Another of her great poems: “how to manage your adult adhd” appears here in American Poetry Review. Visit Knox's website here. Brenda Hillman's website can be visited here.  You can read “First Thought” (from the book Bright Existence)  here.  And watch her read from multiple books in this 2013 reading here (~17 min).Mark Doty writes about the class he shared with Brenda Hillman on his blog here. 

Aaron and James read work by writers we've lost to AIDS in this bonus episode.According to the website for World AIDS Day, more than 38 million people are currently living with HIV. And, since 1984, more than 35 million people have died of HIV or AIDS-related illnesses, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history. Donate here. Please consider buying the books of the poets we honor! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop. We dedicated a Breaking Form Episode ("The Invisible Embrace") to Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995). Monette was the author of 4 novels, 3 books of nonfiction, and 4 books of poems, including a New and Selected Poems  called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to AIDS on February 10, 1995.Read more about Essex Hemphill here, and  "American Wedding" (the poem Aaron reads during the show) here.  He published 2 chapbooks and 2 books of poetry, and edited the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Hemphill died of complications from AIDS in 1995. Watch a short film written and performed by Hemphill called "From the Anacostia to the Potomac" here (~15 min)Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller (March 2, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress and writer who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters's early films, including Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble.  Mueller wrote columns and criticism for magazines and papers, and released several books as well, including a memoir, Garden of Ashes. A short film of remembrances about Mueller can be seen here.  In April 2022, Semiotext(e) released Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories.Iris de la Cruz inspired the foundation Iris House. You can read more about Iris and the foundation here. De la Cruz died in 1991, leaving a 15-year legacy of fighting for health rights for women/femmes living with HIV. Hear the entire essay James reads ("Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and AIDS”) in this video here.  (TW for anachronistic language regarding sex work.)David Michael Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist. He died in 1992, having written more than 10 books (including Close to the Knives, from which Aaron reads), exhibited his visual art all over the world, and directed at least two films. Melvin Dixon was born on May 29, 1950 and died October 26, 1992. He authored two poetry collections: Change of Territory and the posthumous Love's Instruments. His novels were Vanishing Rooms and Trouble the Water. He translated The Collected Poems of Leopold Senghor.  You can watch Danez Smith read a poem by Melvin Dixon here. Read more work by Dixon here. Tim Dlugos was born in 1950 and died in 1990. Dlugos authored at least 8 books, including the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. Read more work here.

C. Russell Price joins us for the Breaking Form Interview and talks doom, Designing Women, and why you should never read the comments on the internet.Price is the author of Oh, You Thought This was a Date?!: Apocalypse Poems, which can be purchased from Northwestern University Press here. Their chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other, is available from Sibling Rivalry Press here. Read here the entire text of How To Stay Politically Active While Fucking The Existential Dread Away (first published in Pank; scroll down).Watch this short (~7 min) reading by C. Russell while they were a Lambda Literary Fellow.Read Claudia Rankine’s Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry here. The Academy notes: “This conversation was presented by the Academy of American Poets at the Associated Writing Programs Conference on February 4, 2011. Claudia Rankine began her talk with a reading of Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change." She then presented the following dialogue.”James’s favorite Jessica Simpson song is “I Wanna Love You Forever.” Watch the official music video for that song here (4:18). 4 Non Blondes was an American alternative rock band active from 1989-1994. Their only album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!, spent 59 weeks on the Billboard 200 and sold 1.5 million copies. You can watch the video for their smash ICONIC hit, “What’s Up,” here. Linda Perry wrote and sang lead on that hit.Watch some of the best Golden Girls moments here (~43 min). And then watch some of Designing Women’s best moments here (~23 min).Gay codes have included a handkerchief code, a whole language called Polari, and symbols (elucidated here by a 1985 issue of Sappho Speaks). You can watch a short film, “Putting on the Dish,” written in Polari here (~6:30 min). Important resources for survivors of sexual assault and abuse can be found at RAINN. Peer resources for trans and nonbinary people can be found at the Trans Lifeline, which is divested from police and run entirely by trans folks.When James says that gender is a copy for which there is no original, he is paraphrasing Judith Butler’s argument in her article, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” which argues that gender and sexuality are always performative and also always being performed. The repeated acts that encode gender are like a script, and that script gets copied and passed around, but there is no original script. “In other words,” Butler writes, “the naturalistic effects of heterosexualized genders are produced through imitative strategies; what they imitate is a phantasmatic ideal of heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect.” You can read the whole (short) essay here.

The queens discuss the ICONIC poems that are near and queer to their hearts.Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.You can read Carl Phillips's poem, "X," from In the Blood, here.Listen to Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read the text here.Read "Satan Says" by Sharon Olds here. In an October 2022 NY Times profile of Sharon Olds, she declares she has a "real simile brain,” explaining further:  “My brain sees in similes.” According to Sam Anderson (who wrote the profile), Olds "has never been comfortable saying definitively, as metaphors do, that something is something else. She ascribes this to her terrifying childhood experience of religion, the idea that blood was wine, that body was bread. To this day, she clings to the comforting distance of that “like.” Blood is like wine, yes; body is like bread, sure — in the same way that a poem is like a real experience but not the thing itself. In the same way that death is like birth, sorrow is like joy, a poet is like a host, an ending is like a beginning. To have a simile brain, as Olds does, is to live in a world of radical interconnection, a world in which nothing stands alone, nothing is ever only itself. And yet everything, in that vast network of mutual meanings, is allowed to remain exactly itself." You can read the whole profile here. Also, we reference it enough in this show that here's a recording of Sharon Olds reading "I Go Back to May 1937."The lecture of Linda Gregg's I reference is a craft talk she gave at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. It is titled "Craft of the Invisible." Listen to it here (~30 minutes).Laura Kasischke's poem "The Ugliness" appears in Prairie Schooner  (Vol. 76, Issue 1, 2002). You can watch her interviewed on a hometown vlog called "Around Town with Linda" here (~35 min).Watch Rita Dove read "After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed" here (~3 minutes). You can read Thomas Centolella's “The Orders” here.Read Denis Johnson's “Now” here. If you'd like to read more about Christopher Bursk, go here. Len Roberts's poem "The Problem" appeared with 8 other poems in American Poetry Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (MARCH/APRIL 2001).Read Etheridge Knight's incredible poem “Feeling Fucked Up” here. You can read two of Jen Jabaily-Blackburn's poems in Couplet Poetry here. 

Hot goss about Victorian poet(s) Michael Field precedes a conversation about the deep loss of animals, and the intimacy, friendship, and love we share with them.Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.We reference a scene from the show Yellowstone where Beth tells her son Carter the universal truths of getting money. You can watch that clip here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=118&v=a68StSECIGI&feature=emb_logoRead more criticism and biography about Michael Field here.Read more poems by Michael Field here. Links to poems we read during this episode include:Jane Kenyon's "Biscuit"Paisley Rekdal's "Once" Bruce Weigl's "May"We'll add to this list of other poems about the love we give to and receive from animals here. Suggest some on our social media.Carl Phillips: "Something to Believe In"Marie Howe: "Buddy"Mark Doty: "Golden Retrievals"Victoria Redel: "The Pact"Mary Oliver: "Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night" (see Oliver read it here).Kevin Young: "Bereavement"Nomi Stone: "Waiting for Happiness"Robert Duncan: "A Little Language"Pattiann Rogers, "Finding the Cat in a Spring Field at Midnight"William Matthews, "Loyal"Christopher Smart, "from Jubilate Agno (for I will consider my cat Joffrey...)"The Humane Society suggests a few coping strategies for dealing with the loss of a loved pet:Acknowledge your grief and give yourself permission to express it.Don't hesitate to reach out to others who can lend a sympathetic ear. Do a little research online and you'll find hundreds of resources and support groups that may be helpful to you.Write about your feelings, either in a journal or a poem, essay, or short story.Call your veterinarian or local humane society to see whether they offer a pet-loss support group or hotline, or can refer you to one.Prepare a memorial for your pet.

Frankly, our dears, all we want is boundless love for Frank O'Hara. We also discuss radical poetic embodiment, and ponder whether or not Dickinson's "Wild Nights" (269) is a fisting poem.Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.Frank O’Hara was born Francis Russell O'Hara in Baltimore, MD, but grew up near Worcester, MA. As a kid, he studied music in hopes of being a concert pianist. After a stint in the navy (shocking!) he went to Harvard, where Edward Gorey was his roommate. Imagine what those bunk sessions were like.Watch Jenny Xie read “My Heart” here (~1.5 min).Read O’Hara’s “Ave Maria” here, and “you will have made the little tykes/ so happy....”There's a film called "Wild Nights with Emily" (watch a 10 minute clip here), starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson. The film's description says it is informed by Dickinson's private letters and is a "timely critique of how women's history is rewritten." Watch Ruth Stone read her poem "Where I Came From" here (~2 min). For more about Beverly Pepper's work, watch this brief (2 min) video. Pepper died in 2020. We reference an Instagram video post that Jorie Graham made about Pepper (her mother) making art. The post is captioned thusly: "My mother beginning to draw again with a partly mended broken arm. She holds one arm with the other for a moment, as if her wounded arm is a tool. Certainly she knew enough to know her wound was always her tool. She is so comfortable because Greg Whitmore is behind the camera, but, after a point, she is gone from us—all of us—I can see it as it happens—because she totally enters the work. It used to scare me as a child when she disappeared from this realm, and went into that one. It was strange to realize that there WAS an other realm into which one could go. Into which I could lose her. Of course, years later, I realized it was one of the greatest gifts she gave me. When she would leave me “alone” in this world knowing I had to find the other world in this one & find my way to it. Which is one’s fate. And one’s journey." You can see the post here. The video in the post was made in 2014 and can also be watched online here. 

Just the tip-off! You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll win $50 in breakcoin (more crypto than currency). Polish up your high-heel cleats and get out your pompoms! Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.Writing for the Ploughshares blog, Robert Anthony Siegel calls Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book “a progenitor of the fragmentary, nonlinear, hybrid-genre work....” Read the whole, short essay here.You can watch Elaine Equi read four poems from Big Other here (~4.5 mins). And read more about this fabulous poet’s bio here. Hear Plath read “November Graveyard” here (~1 min)Hear Plath read “Poppies in October” here (~1 min)Plath reads the Rabbit Catcher here (~1.5 min)Plath reads “The Applicant” here (~2 min)Watch a beautifully-read, dramatic rendering of “Crossing the Water” here (~1 min)Audio of Plath reading Lady Lazarus can be heard here (~3 min)Watch Clara Sismondo perform “Blackberrying” (National Poetry in Voice) here (~3 min)Hear “Tulips” in Plath’s voice here (~4.5 min)Watch this arresting short film of “Death & Co” produced by Troublemakers TV here (~1.5 min)You can read “The Couriers” here.Read “The Colossus” here.Hear Plath read “Daddy” here (~4 min)Read “Electra on Azalea Path” hereRead “The Babysitters” hereRead “The Beekeeper’s Daughter” hereRead “Winter Trees” hereYou can read this fascinating essay about acquiring Plath’s table by David Trinidad here.Listen to David talk with scholar Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, about the light and dark sequences in Plath’s life.Watch Dorianne Laux read a very recent poem “What's Broken” here (~2 min)You can attend virtually this fabulous Terrance Hayes reading at the University of Chicago (~1 hour)

Uh-oh! The queens dish poetry playboys and punk rock goddesses! It's like an episode of Gossip Girl, but make it poetry....Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop. George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, known simply as Lord Byron, was immensely popular during his time. More info about him and his bisexuality can be found here.  You can read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage here. Lord Byron apparently referred to Wordsworth as “Turdsworth.”Buffering the Vampire Slayer is a Buffy podcast hosted by Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo. Each episode of the podcast also includes a new original song recapping a separate, glorious Buffy episode.Anne Waldman’s website is http://www.annewaldman.org. She  has a new book of essays, interviews, letters, and poems entitled Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2022)."UH-OH PLUTONIUM!" can be watched, rewatched, and watched again and again here (~3.5 min).Read this wonderful profile of Edward Said in the New Yorker. Juliette Lewis describes how influential Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet was for her in this Spin interview (from 2009).Plutonium is the element with the highest atomic number to occur in nature.Watch  Waldman give some advice to young poets here (~3 min).

The queens discuss breaking open the closet doors through the work of Paul Monette.Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show! If you need a good indie bookstore, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop. Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995)  was the author of at least 4 novels: Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978), The Gold Diggers (1979), Afterlife (1990), and Halfway Home (1991). He also wrote Sanctuary, a fable, which was illustrated by Vivienne Flesher and published posthumously in 1997. His first nonfiction book, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) received a National Book Critic's Circle Award nomination and won a Lambda Literary Award. His second memoir is Becoming a Man; his third book of nonfiction is Last Watch of the Night, published in 1994. His books of poems are The Carpenter at the Asylum, in 1975; No Witness (1981), and Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (1988). His New and Selected Poems is called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to aids on February 10, 1995. Watch Monette's iconic 1994 appearance on the Charlie Rose show here (~20 minutes). Watch this terrific wide-ranging interview with Paul Monette conducted in September 1993 by Sheila James Kuehl (1 hour).  You can see the poet Philip Clark, co-editor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, read Monette’s poem "Your Sightless Days” here. (~5 mins).  Recorded live at Bloombars in Washington D.C., June 8, 2011.The anthology that Aaron references is titled Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS. Aaron is right: Monette has 6 poems in that anthology, which was edited by Michael Klein.The Best Little Boy in the World was published in 1973 under the pseudonym John Reid. The book was re-released in 1998 alongside its sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, under the author’s real name, Andrew Tobias. Read an essay entitled “Paul Monette’s AIDS Poetry” at the Yale Review.