Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Poetry & fruit wine, bebè! We recommend watching episode 6 of season 1, “Wine & Roses.”  You’ll remember the experience! Troye Sivan Mellet is a South African-born Australian singer-songwriter, actor and YouTuber. Watch the official video for Sivan’s song, “Bloom” here.  While Aaron cites another music writer’s critique of “Bloom” as a song about bottoming, I prefer this close-reading of the song, written by one Bobby Finger for Jezebel. Watch Eduardo C. Corral’s reading at the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference—the first reading he gave from Guillotine (~15 minutes).Read Eleanor Lerman’s poem “The Mystery of Meteors” here.Mark Bibbins makes use of pop culture in his poems, like this excellent example (“In the Corner of a Room Where You Would Never Look,” first published in the New Yorker). Watch Maureen Seaton read her poem “Fourth Stage Metaphoric Breast Cancer” here.You can watch G.C. Waldrep’s hat discuss his latest collection, Earliest Witness, here  (~12 min).Atsuro Riley read for the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and you can watch that reading here (90 minutes). Lynn Emanuel reads her poem “Desire” at the Jazz Poetry concert and the performance can be viewed here (~3 min). Watch Francine J. Harris read “Red is the Mess” for Button Poetry here (~3 min). Watch Eleni Sikelianos in conversation with Christos Chomenidis at the Museum of Delphi here (~45 min).  Watch Beckian Fritz Goldberg read at Arizona State in 2015 here (~12 min). You can follow Alex Dimitrov on Twitter @alexdimitrov Wayne Koestenbaum makes some trance-y Instagram posts. Go follow him on Insta at @wayne.koestenbaum

Aaron and James  correct history and re-award the Pulitzer Prize. Hindsight is 20/20 and we definitely are hind-oglers.Support the poets we mention by buying their books. We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie bookseller in the DC area.Read David Trinidad's dishy and detailed account of how Anne Sexton got her Pulitzer here. More/other insight into the Pulitzers can be had in reading this July 1957 article by Arthur Mizener that appeared in The Atlantic. After Forest Gander won the Pulitzer, he gave a 5-book recommended reading list that included C.D. Wright's last book. (Wright and Gander were married; Gander's prizewinning collection Be With is largely elegiac.) You can read his recommendations here. if you haven't listened to Jericho Brown's interview with the On Being Project, do yourself a favor and listen here. (The interview discusses sexual violence.) Brown won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for his book The Tradition).Adrienne Rich was a 3-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Before winning in 1998 for Black Zodiac, Charles Wright was a finalist for the prize four times.

Aaron and James revisit Ai's poem "Twenty Year Marriage." The conversation opens up to ideas about education and the violence of white supremacy.Show Notes:Ai was born on Oct. 21, 1947. She died on March 20, 2010. She published Cruelty in 1973. Her second book, Killing Floor (1978) was the Lamont selection from the Academy of American Poets. She won the National Book Award for Vice in 1999. She was awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Hear Ai read her poem "The Good Shepherd" here.Read a tribute to Ai here.You can read Sharon Olds's "The Pope's Penis" here. Read "Return to the MFA: A Call for Systemic Change in the Literary Arts" by Namrata Poddar here.Please support independent bookstores! You can purchase Ai's books as well as books by other poets we mention in the show, at Loyalty Bookstores. 

The queens get Swiftian!As always, please support the writers we mention by buying at indie bookstores. If you need a good one, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned DC-area store. Catherine Barnett is a Taurus. Watch Nicole Sealey perform Barnett's "Apophasis at the All-Night Rite Aid" here. (~2 min)You can read Vievee Francis's poem "Say It, Say It Any Way You Can" here. You can read the title poem of Cathy Linh Che's  book, Split,  here. The Literary House Press released a broadside of that poem; you can purchase that here. Visit Yes Yes Books here. Watch Diannely Antigua read "Diary Entry # 1: Testimony" from her Ugly Music here.  (~2 min)Watch Roger Reeves read his poem "The Book of Commas" at the O, Miami Poetry Festival here. (~4 min)Watch the fabulosity that is Naomi Shihab Nye (Pisces) read her poem "How Do I Know When a Poem is Finished" here. (~2 min.) Her next book, The Turtle of Michigan, is a novel available from Greenwillow Books as of March 15, 2022.Matthew Olzmann (Libra) is the author of Constellation Route (Alice James, January 2022) and two previous collections of poems, Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. He teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Watch him read his poem "Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice" (originally published in Waxwing) here. (~2.5 min.)Aaron Smith (Gemini) is the author most recently of The Book of Daniel (U Pittsburgh, 2019). He is co-editor for Court Green. Watch him read his poem "Cher Uncensored" here. (~2 min.) Lynn Melnick(Scorpio)  has two books releasing in 2022: Refusenik: Poems (YesYes) and I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton (University of Texas Press's American Music Series). She has 2 previous books of poems: Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012). Read her poem "Landscape with Loanword and Solstice" in the New Yorker here and watch her read her poem "One Sentence About Los Angeles" here. (~2 min, CW for sexual assault.) Watch "10 Questions for John Ashbery" (with Time); he discusses poetry readings, art criticism, and why he hates the sound of his own voice here. (~4 min) You can read Claudia Rankine's "Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry" here.  You can hear Terrance Hayes's read his poems "Talk" and "The Blue Baraka" here, courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library (~7 min; "Talk" is up first).

Our hysterical homosexuals pit quotes by Julianne and Marianne Moore, then play a game of fuck, marry, kill: the poetic form edition. You can read the Marianne Moore poems we reference by clicking on the links below:"Roses Only""Nevertheless""In Distrust of Merits" "Poetry""Silence" Read a small essay by Annie Finch on (as well as Ms. Moore's poem) "What Are Years?" here.One correction: James gets a word wrong when he quotes Marianne Moore saying, "I have no sympathy for people who find unpopularity embittering," but she says she has "no sympathy with people." The quote is from her Selected Letters. We reference Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cunningham is a Scorpio and was the first out gay man to win the Pulitzer for Fiction (though many queer writers before him won, they had not publicly acknowledged their queerness).For readers and writers looking for books on form and craft:A great resource about the ghazal is Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, edited by Agha Shahid Ali. Another anthology about craft is Of Color: Poets' Ways of Making: An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (The Operating System, 2019; much of the anthology is available for download on TOS's website).We also recommend Lewis Turco's The New Book of Forms, as well as Annie Finch's and Kathrine Lore Varnes's An Exaltation of Forms:  Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art.  And David Lehman's edited collection called Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms.Please support the poets and writers we mention, and support indie bookstores. If you need a good one, we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC.  

We're 30, dirty, and thriving! The queens name 30 poets for each other, and then we associate a word or phrase with each one. No beeps! Please consider supporting the poets we mention in today's show by buying their books! We can recommend Loyalty Bookstore, a black-owned DC-based indie bookstore that ships nationally. Watch Anne Carson read "A Lecture on Corners" here (~58 min)Marilyn  Chin's website is  http://www.marilynchin.orgWatch Carolyn Kizer talk poetry and writing with Lucille Clifton, and read her poem "Bitch" here (~30 min)Find Rachel Zucker online here. Watch Rachel read "Don't Say Anything Beautiful Kiss Me" here (~3.5 min) James and Aaron are fascinated by Anne Waldman's "Uh-Oh Plutonium," which you can watch here. Alan Michael Parker can be found online at https://alanmichaelparker.comNicole Sealey's website is https://www.nicolesealey.com. Watch her read her poem "Even the Gods" here (~2 min)Alex Dimitrov's website is https://www.alexdimitrov.comWe mention two poems by Lynda Hull. Read "Night Waitress" here and "Black Mare" here.                              Listen to this fabulous On Being interview with Mary Oliver (~50 min; conducted in 2015)You can read Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" here. Listen to this great interview with Kimiko Hahn (Versus podcast; ~55 min)Philip Larkin's website is https://philiplarkin.comHere's a terrific poem by Michael CollierYou can watch Danez Smith read "Dear White America" here.  (~3.5 min)Here's a recipe for chocolate peanut butter oreo dirt pudding.There is absolutely at least one drag queen named Idaho, and you can find her on Twitter @akaidaho

Game day with Carl Phillips, who is gracious enough to play a game called "Apertures." You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.You can watch this terrific interview with Carl Phillips by Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles here. Hear Carl read "Then the War" here (~2 min)Hear Carl read "Among the Trees" here.  Then make sure you send him a fan letter because this essay is freaking BEAUTIFUL.Read Richie Hofmann's lovely and insightful review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here. 

Part 2 of our interview with Carl Phillips begins with his reading of "Invasive Species" from Then the War. Then we talk origin, luck, coping, and unexpected kindness.You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.Hear Carl read "Among the Trees," a lyric essay from Then the War, here.  Read Richie Hofmann's review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here. 

Carl Phillips stops by to talk poetry, survival, harnesses, and censorship.You can buy Carl Phillips's books -- particularly his newest, Then the War -- here at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned independent bookstore in DC.You can hear Carl read the title poem from Then the War here (~2 min).Read Richie Hofmann's review of Then the War in the LA Review of Books here.You can read "All the Love You've Got," the poem banned by the Academy of American Poets here.

The hosts celebrate the vibrant intersection of drag culture and poetry, with RuPaul taking center stage. They engage in a playful game matching quotes, blending humor with literary insight. The impact of Emily Dickinson's work on personal connections and societal choices is explored, alongside reflections on identity and creativity. Quirky anecdotes illustrate the experience of being a 'late bloomer' in literary pursuits. Additionally, the conversation highlights RuPaul's cultural significance and the ongoing evolution of language in media.