Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens explore poetic law and rebellion with Denise Duhamel. Part 2 of their Breaking Form Interview concludes.Please consider purchasing books by Denise and other poets we mention in this episode at Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned DC-area bookstore.Denise Duhamel's most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). Her collaboration with Julie Marie Wade, The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, was published by Noctuary Press in 2019. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the guest editor is for The Best American Poetry 2013.The pantoum is a Malaysian poetic form that was introduced into English literature in the 19th century. The pantoum consists of a series of quatrains rhyming abab in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme (as bcbc, cdcd). Although the pantoum was introduced into Western literature in the 19th century, it bears some resemblance to older French fixed forms, such as the rondeau and the villanelle.Denise's poem "Terza Irma" appears in her book Second Story and was first published in The Missouri Review. You can read it here. Watch Denise Duhamel read "Dear Memory" from Second Story here (~3 min). Watch Timothy Berry recite "Ego" by Denise Duhamel (Poetry Out Loud competition).

The queens ask Denise Duhamel's superhero poet origin story in Part One of their interview.Buy Denise's books at Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned bookstore.  Denise Duhamel was a sociology major in undergrad. Her most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). Her collaboration with Julie Marie Wade, The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, was published by Noctuary Press in 2019. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the guest editor is for The Best American Poetry 2013.Dangerous Diane is also known as DANGEROUS DIANE SPODAREK. Her website is: http://dangerousdiane.blogspot.com. She also has an MFA, from Eastern Michigan in video & performance.Bob Flanagan and David Trinidad published A TASTE OF HONE with Cold Calm Press, 1990.If you don't know what a gay bear is, think: dad bod-burly, hirsute, lumberjack vibes, though of course there are lots of different kind of bears, including femme bears, polar bears, and younger bears, called cubs. If you want to know more about gay taxonomy, visit my Instagram. You can listen to the pronunciation of Orchises Press here.Click here to read more about Bill Knott, and here to see a poem of his set to video and music (~1 min).Click here to read more about Michael Burkard.Click here to read Lyn Lifshin's poem "The Fathers." You can see her give a reading here (~2 min).Read more about Tom Lux. More about Jean Valentine can be found here. Jayne Anne Phillips's Sweethearts (illustrated by Yvonne Jacquette) can be found online and bought for like $120. You can see Phillips read with Amy Hempel for The Strand here (~60 min).Over the last 40 years, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has served as a home for groundbreaking works of poetry, music, theater and visual arts. A multicultural and multi-arts institution, the Cafe gives voice to a diverse group of rising poets, actors, filmmakers and musicians. Visit them online at https://www.nuyorican.org

Join the  queens as they go spelunking in some of their favorite openings. You can buy books mentioned in the show at Loyalty Books, a Black-owned indie bookstore in Washington, Dc. Watch Louise Glück read "The Wild Iris" here (~2 min)A terrific interview between Glück and Peter Streckfus can be found here (they also read together; scroll down for that) (~30 min) Watch Hanif Abdurraqib read from A Fortune for Your Disaster here (~10 min) Olena Kalytiak Davis "A Few Words for the Visitor in the Parlor" from And Her Soul Out of Nothing. You can watch Eloisa Amezcua read "The Unbosoming" from OKD's 2nd book, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities. (~3 min) Watch Jane Mead give a reading at Texas State U here, which begins with the poem Aaron mentions, "Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make" from The Lord and the General Din of the World, here (~40 min) Listen to Brigit Pegeen Kelly read "Dead Doe" from Song here Watch an interview with (with interspersed readings by) Irene McKinney here (~25 min). A longer celebration of Dr. McKinney was recorded in 2013, and you can watch that here (~1 hour) Watch Diane Seuss read from Frank: sonnets, including the opening poem here (~20 min).  You can read an interview with Reginald Shepherd here.  Watch Shane McCrae read Brock-Broido's "Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements" here (~5 min)  Nicanor Parra reads "Hombre Imaginario" to an adoring crowd here (~3 min), Watch Eduardo C. Corral read at the 2021 Sewanee Writers' Conference (with Arhm Choi Wild; ~30 min total) here. You can view Tino Rodriguez's piece Our Completion: oil on wood 5"x7" here (note: directs to artist's website; piece has a different title there).

Aaron challenges James to a game of "Elaine Equi or Elaine Benis"; then the boys see what happens when we add one small word to a line of poetry.Learn more about Elaine Equi's Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems here. Elaine Equi  was nominated for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize International. See her read here.Read Baudelaire's "Destruction" here.Learn more about Sappho here. Mock Orange: Hear Louise Gluck (Taurus 4/22) read it here.Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Desire" here.Read Jericho Brown on the form he invented, the duplex, here. Natasha Trethewey's third book of poetry is Native Guard. You can buy Trethewey's memoir Memorial Drive -- as well as any books authored by the genius writers we've mentioned on today's episode -- can be purchased from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC.

 Our intrepid hosts investigate poetry reading cliches and surmise which poets of the past (and present) would have committed these heinous crimes -- and in broad daylight, too!Poets we mention include:1) Read a fabulous essay by Emily Wilson on Sappho here. 2) Many of (Sagittarius) William Blake's artworks can be viewed online through the National Gallery of Victoria here.3)  Catullus's manuscripts are viewable online here; you'll need to be able to read Latin.4)  Aaron references James Wright's "The Sumac in Ohio," which ends:"Before June begins, the sap and coal smoke and soot from Wheeling steel, wafted down the Ohio by some curious gentleness in the Appalachians, will gather all over the trunk. The skin will turn aside hatchets and knife blades. You cannot even carve a girl's name on the sumac. It is viciously determined to live and die alone, and you can go straight to hell." Wright was a Sagittarius. 5) The poem we reference by Maxine Kumin about wearing the clothes she traded with Anne Sexton can be found here (navigate to the poem on the left side of the website). Kumin is a June 6 Gemini (like Aaron). 6)  H.D. (Virgo) is primarily a poet, but she also wrote prose and translated from the Greek.  7) Go watch Louise Glück talk about making poems here, particularly about her poem "Landscape" in Averno (first published in Threepenny Review). You'll thank me for showing this to you. Glück is a Taurus. 8) Terrance Hayes is a Scorpio. Visit his website here. 9)  The National Portrait Gallery had a terrific show on Gertrude Stein (Aquarius) in 2011. You can view much of the show online here. And of course there's a story that Anne Carson recounts in her book, Glass, Irony and Godabout why Hemingway friend-broke-up with Stein (in the essay "The Gender of Sound") that we recommend. (The story will not improve anyone's opinion of Hemingway.)  10) Joyce Carol Oates (Gemini) issued an apology after railing against the use of singular they/them pronouns. You can read a recap of the ugly mess here. 11)  Ezra Pound was a Scorpio as well as a poet, translator, and critic. His "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste" is instructive advice for poets.  Louis Menand wrote an essay for the New Yorker about Pound's rabid antisemitism ("The Pound Error," June 16, 2008). 12) Allen Ginsberg was a Gemini. You can read a collaborative poem called "Pull My Daisy" here. Kerouac adapted that into a film starring Ginsberg and others in their circle; Pull My Daisy can be watched here. 13)  Read more about Christina Rossetti on the Victorian Web, one of the best online resources about writers in the long 19th century. Rossetti is a Sagittarius. 14)  More about John Keats can be found here. Aaron and James also recommend Anahid Nersessian's terrific book Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse.&

An episode of literary games and  gossipAre you even gay if you can't differentiate between Debbie Harry, Deborah Digges, and Debora Greger? Are you even a writer if you don't know which poet won 4 Pulitzers?Loyalty Bookstore, a black-owned bookstore in DC, is a great place to buy books by authors we discussed today.If you need resources to cope with some mental health struggles, we recommend visiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness: https://www.nami.org/help Deborah Greger (Leo) does not have a book with the word "animals" in the title. You can read more about this incredible poet here. James's favorite Greger poem is "Head, Perhaps of an Angel" which you can read in New England Review here.Deborah Digges (Aquarius) wrote poetry and memoir. Read more about her here. Digges’s second memoir, The Stardust Lounge, is a portrait of her younger son, who by the time he was 13 was involved in gangs. The book details how Digges decides to "shadow" him to try to understand him better. The book Aaron references overhearing a conversation about might have been The Stardust Lounge. You can read Digges's poem "Rough Music" here.Debbie Harry is the lead singer of the band Blondie. She's a Cancer (July 1). Slash of Guns 'n' Roses has donated his time, energy, and money to animal welfare and children's music education causes. In 2008, he donated to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.Robert Penn Warren's racism and his attempts to educate and enlighten his ignorance remain a topic of conversation. One incredible essay in the discourse is this one by Natasha Trethewey, delivered when she was U.S. Poet Laureate.

The AWP Mean Girl Quiz concludes, with a twist at the end! 

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession is an intimate knowledge of its ugly underside."  --James BaldwinOur AWP Mean Girls Quiz kicks off!

Who will rule the school? In the first of three AWP-related episodes, we're recasting "Mean Girls" as poets. Episodes 2 & 3 contain the AWP Mean Girl Quiz that will help you avoid being a Regina George. 

Miguel Murphy's most recent book is  Shoreditch, which you can buy here.Arthur Hugh Clough is best known, according to the Poetry Foundation, "for his early, shorter poems and for the longer, later work that sprang from his intense religious doubts. He was an important influence on later poets such as T.S. Eliot, and his best work hints at the radical experiments and split subjectivities that would become the hallmarks of Modernism." The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the "long, incomplete poem Dipsychus most fully expresses Clough’s doubts about the social and spiritual developments of his era..." You can read it here.William Shakespeare wrote plays and poems.Cormac McCarthy published Suttree in 1979.Thomas Bernhard's novel Frost was originally published in German in 1963. Michael Hofmann published a translation in 2006. Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. Monsieur Pain was originally published in 1994  under the title La senda de los elefantes.You can watch the BBC filming of the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth with Judi Dench here. Judi's "Out, out damn spot" speech as Lady Macbeth starts around the two-hour mark (and the wail around 2 hours and 4 minutes).Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, and founder of the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), an unarmed civilian militia. He is considered one of the most important 20th century Japanese writers. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure.  Masakatsu Morita was Mishima's lover; he was 25 when Mishima completed seppuku.