Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Aaron and James revisit Chrystos, Audre Lorde, and Minnie Bruce Pratt--three queer poets who were censored and attacked by Jesse Helm after winning fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. Please consider supporting authors and indie bookstores. You can purchase books by the writers we discuss at Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-based independent bookseller.Chrystos is a Menominee writer and two-spirit activist. Chrystos is a Scorpio. Their books include Not Vanishing, Dream On, In Her I Am, Fugitive Colors, and Fire Power. Read an interview with Chrystos here. Audre Lorde  was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. Lorde was an Aquarius. She died of breast cancer in 1992. Her books include The First Cities, Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, New York Head Shop, Coal, Between Our Selves, Hanging Fire, The Black Unicorn, The Cancer Journals, Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power, Chosen Poems: Old and New, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Our Dead Behind Us, A Burst of Light, The Marvelous Mathematics of Distance, Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems, and I Am Your sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. Read Lorde's essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" here. Dr. Minnie Bruce Pratt is a Virgo (Sept. 12). She was born in Selma, Alabama and received her BA from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her books includeThe Sound of One Fork, Crimes Against Nature, Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991, We Say We Love Each Other, S/HE, Walking Back Up Depot Street, The Money Machine: Selected Poems, The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems,  Inside the Money Machine, and (most recently) Magnified. Read an interview with Pratt regarding her book Magnified (Wesleyan, 2021) here. We mention Sarah Schulmann and her book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993.  It was a 2021 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and it was also one of NPR's Best Books of 2021.You can read Wanda Coleman's essay on Audre Lorde in the LA Times here.While her birthday is not exactly revealed in the show, many followers of the show Friends believe that Monica is a classic Virgo or perhaps a Taurus.

Tantalize, Memory: Our kiki with David Trinidad continues! Buy David's new book, Digging to Wonderland, at your favorite indie bookstore -- or buy it here from Loyalty Books, a Black-owned independent bookseller in Washington, DC.Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act whose memory was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy. You can watch here some footage of her performing an abbreviated (and very clean) version of her famous routine, "The Psychology of a Stripteaser" in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen (~5 min).John Yau's new book, Joe Brainard: The Art of the Personal, will be released September 2022 from  Rizzoli International Publications. For more about Brainard, visit the website dedicated to his work here. A great retrospect about Joe Brainard appeared in Artforum. Larry Rivers has a great portrait of Frank O'Hara here. According to this website Roger (1954 - 1982) was an American gay porn star who appeared in pornographic movies in the 1970s. After an early career as a model and go-go boy from age 17, he appeared as a "Discovery" centerfold in "Blueboy" magazine, Roger appeared in many film loops of the pre-condom era, co-starring with other notable porn stars of the time, including Al Parker, Jack Wrangler, Chuck Samson, and Bruno. Roger was also a popular stage performer in gay nightclubs and theaters. Roger left the adult film industry in 1980 and in 1982, en route to Las Vegas, perished in a car accident. In 2000, an imposter posing as Roger appeared on a number of Yahoo! groups, but was soon exposed as a fraud. He told stories of having attended Al Parker's memorial service in 1992, remaining in touch with co-star Jack Wrangler, and maintaining a monogamous relationship since the late 1980s while living in a suburb of Chicago. All of this information was completely false.Hear David read his poem "Ode to Dick Fisk" here  (at Naropa).Read more about Elaine Equi here. Watch Rachel Blau DuPlessis talk about the "exuberant sexual and lexical energy and gay will to power" of Frank O'Hara's Second Avenue here (~6 min)Sei Shōnagon (清少納言, c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book (枕草子, makura no sōshi).Want to read more about Sexton, faith, and love? Your wait is over. Read Sylvia Plath's poem "Edge" here. If you want to know what Hart Crane looks like, click here.

We kiki with David Trinidad about memory, desire, and his poem "Finding Bobby." Order David's new book, Digging to Wonderland, here -- from Loyalty Bookstores, a black-owned independent bookstore in DC.Doriane Laux and Kim Addonizio's The Poet's Companion says this: "David Trinidad, who writes poems about sexuality from a gay man's perspective, does so in very explicit terms," and then they excerpt his poem "Eighteen to Twenty-One." The poem is also anthologized in other books, including High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, edited by Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg, The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou, not to mention in David's book Answer Song, which you should totally buy.

Reading is FUNdamental! The queens skewer the filthy fundamentalism of Aaron's youth.As always, please consider buying books mentioned in the show at an indie bookstore. We recommend Loyalty Books, a Black-owned bookshop in Washington, D.C.Aaron mentions an underground comic by Justin Green called Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. You can read more about that comic here. If you have about $1,000, you can buy a beautiful hardcover version of it online.Mill Creek flows generally west-northwest in a winding course through central and western Jackson County, through the city of Ripley, which may have been named for Harry Ripley, a traveling preacher said to have drowned in the creek in 1830.Justin Bieber's former spiritual advisor, Carl Lentz, was a pastor at the megachurch Hillsong who had a very public downfall. Watch Melanie Griffith's character in Working Girl say, "I have a head business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?" here. Troop Beverly Hills starred Shelley Long, Tori Spelling, Jenny Lewis, and Mary Gross, in a strong ensemble comedic cast. Watch the trailer here. Watch Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler tell a scary salon story to her troop of "Wilderness Girls" here.

Work, girl! And we give love to our power bottom brethren.Read Emily Dickinson's Poem 260.  You can listen to it read by Yina Liang, courtesy of the Favorite Poem Project here (~5 min). Read (or listen) to Richard Blanco's poem "We're Not Going to Malta" here. Watch Larry Levis read with Phil Levine (~76 minutes; Levis is first). Aaron is right, Levis has a lovely, crisp, deep man-voice.Read Jane Kenyon's "Having it Out with Melancholy" here. Hear her read "Otherwise" here (video is of her and Donald Hall, walking with their dog). There's an incredible musical response to Jane Kenyon's "Having it Out with Melancholy" that I could not recommend more. Watch/listen here. Composed by Jonathan McNair and performed by The Unheard-of//Ensemble (~22 minutes). Otherwise is Kenyon's New and Selected Poems. The Collected Poems assembles Kenyon's four previous volumes, plus her posthumous volumes, her translations of Anna Akhmatova, and then four poems never before published in book form. The book Aaron mentions is A Hundred White Daffodils: Essays, Interviews, The Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, and One Poem.Read Nazim Hikmet's poem "On Living" here.Auden did write a blowjob poem, apparently known by several different titles: "A Day for a Lay," aka “The Platonic Blow, by Miss Oral,” aka “The Gobble Poem,” and you can read about it here.James's favorite Steve Orlen poem is "In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas," which you can read online here.

It's Breaking Form Game Day with Diane Seuss! Buy Di's books at your favorite independent bookstore. We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC.Apparently, the word "jockstrap" comes from the riders of early bicycles (called penny farthings, which had a huge front wheel and a smaller rear wheel). The riders were called "bicycle jockeys," and they wore athletic supporters called "bicycle jockey straps." The B52s originally consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards, synth bass), Cindy Wilson (vocals, percussion), Ricky Wilson (guitar), and Keith Strickland (drums, guitar, keyboards). Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related illness in 1985, and Strickland switched from drums to lead guitar. The band also added various members for albums and live performances. In April of 2022, the group announced that they would embark on a final farewell tour, lasting from August 11th to November 11th, 2022. KC and the Sunshine Band will join the group on this tour.It seems pretty settled now that Keats was treating syphilis with mercury, which may have hastened his death due to tuberculosis. Read a great article on Keats and the movie Campion made of his last few years, Bright Star, here.    Watch John Travolta deliver that iconic line from Saturday Night Fever which Di references. Saturday night fever:  "Maybe if you ain't so good, I ain't so bad, you know"?

Margins: Bras, God, Legs, Poetry.  Part 2 of our interview with Diane Seuss, 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book of poems, frank: sonnets. You can purchase frank at The Ivy, a great independent bookstore in Baltimore.A wonderful essay on Keat's epitaph can be found in The Paris Review here.  For more about still life as it pertains to domestic spaces and women's spaces, check out William Norman Bryson's book Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Rembrandt painted "Still-Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl" around 1639; it is currently exhibited in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, though to view it online visit: https://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.htmlIf you or a friend need resources regarding assault and/or harassment, we recommend https://www.rainn.org.

Diane Seuss joins us for the Breaking Form Interview.Seuss won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for frank: sonnets. Frank also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pen/Voelcker Award, and the LA Times Book Prize. If you haven't read frank yet, you can buy get it from Loyalty Books, a Black-owned independent bookstore.Her four previous books are It Blows You Hollow (1999); Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010); Four-Legged Girl (2015, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018). She grew up and lives in Michigan.Di is a Gemini with an Aries rising; her moon is in Sagittarius.Aaron Smith is a Gemini with a Leo rising; his moon is in Capricorn. James is a Libra with a Sag rising; their moon is in Cancer.

Poetry, promiscuity, philosophy: maybe you should ask your next question!Thom Gunn was born on August 29, 1929 and died on April 25, 2004. He was born in Gravesend, England to parents who were both journalists. Jorie Graham (born May 9, 1950—Taurus) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1996 for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994. Since 1999, she has been Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric at Harvard—and she is the first woman to hold the Boylston professorship. She has received many honors and awards for her work. Her newest book is Runaway (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020). Watch Graham read "Studies in Secrecy" at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival here (under 5 min). Jesus was born….just kidding!We mention Jorie Graham's poem "Praying  (Attempt of 6 June ’03)" – the one in which the speaker adopts a cat with feline HIV. It was first published in the London Review of Books in January, 2005, and later included in her book Overlord. You can read that poem here. Graham's poem "Evolution" first appeared in The New York Times Magazine and can be read here.  The cathedral mentioned in Jorie Graham's poem is St Patrick's Cathedral Armagh in Ireland.Watch Thom Gunn reading at the Berkeley Art Center here (~25 min)The article Aaron references regarding Thom Gunn (aka "promiscuous poet") can be read here. The How to Be Amazing podcast interview with Tim Gunn can be found here. Watch Thom Gunn reading at the Berkeley Art Center here (~25 min)You can read "A Feather for Voltaire" from Hybrids of Plantas and of Ghosts here. You can hear Allen Ginsberg read "Please Master" here (~5 min)

Aaron and James talk about giving poetry readings and processing shame.Please consider buying the books of writers we mention. We like Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie in DC. Check out Yona Harvey's website hereYou can check out the creative nonfiction journal Fourth Genre here. Watch the interview with Cher on The Letterman Show (around 3:57).The reference to the "God Warrior" is to Marguerite Perrin, who once appeared on the television reality show Trading Spouses, which selected mothers from extreme opposite families and swapped them with one another—then filmed the fireworks.