Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Art of Losing: The Love Life of Elizabeth Bishop May 06, 2024

Show notes

The art of losing isn't hard to master in this episode devoted to the loves and losses of Elizabeth Bishop's life.
If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Read Bishop's villanelle (the only one she ever published!) "One Art." Read about her drafting process (at least 16 versions) here.
You can listen to Bishop read a few of her poems, including "In the Waiting Room" here--recorded at the 92nd Street Y in October 1977. And here's a much younger Bishop reading "The Fish."
Bishop's Paris Review interview is absolute gold.
For more on Lota and Samambaia, the house she built north of Rio, read this Paris Review article on two recent movies made about Bishop and Lota.
Other receipts for what we say in the show are found in this New York Times article, "The Love of Her Life"
For more about the acrimonious "war of the legal wills" between Bishop and Macedo Soares, I recommend David Hoak's article "Proofs of Love: The Last Letters of Lota de Macedo Soares," published in PN Review Volume 42 Number 2 (Nov-Dec 2015). The link contains a paywall.
See more photographs of Samambaia, the glass butterfly-shaped house Lota built in Petrópolis.
Here are the receipts about Judy Flynn.
Receipts for the Louise Crane-Billie Holiday tryst are here and here.
Read "The Loneliness of Elizabeth Bishop" in The Nation.
Crusoe in England" was a coded coping with grief over Soares' death. when the repatriated Robinson Crusoe recalls the loss of “Friday, my dear Friday,” who “died of measles / seventeen years ago come March.” Had Soares lived to one more March birthday, the couple would have spent seventeen years together. You can hear Bishop read (and follow along the text of) "Crusoe in England" here.

The Gods at 3 A.M. (guest Jericho Brown on Reginald Shepherd pt. 2) Apr 29, 2024

Show notes

Jericho Brown returns to finish the conversation about Reginald Shepherd, (in)formalism, and inspiration.
If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Jericho's THE SELECTED SHEPHERDis available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
We talk about Shepherd's "The Gods at 3am" on another episode of Breaking Form in "Mona in the Corner."
Read more about Papa Legba, a figure in voodoo traditions in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Louisiana.

Read Jericho's poem "Again" from his first book, Please.
Jericho mentions his poem "Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry" which appeared in The New York Times early on in the pandemic.
Daniel Black's book title is titled Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America. Read the NPR review by Gabino Iglesias here, and follow him on Instagram @drdanielblack
Some fabulous essays on Shepherd or reviews of his books can be found in the resources listed below:
John Gallagher on Shepherd
Joan Houlihan, In Memoriam of Reginald Shepherd
Brian Henry on Wrong
As always, check out Shepherd's own blog.

Book Club Apr 22, 2024

Show notes

If you bring along to Breaking Form Book Club an extra bottle of chardonnay, we'll read some poems from books you may have missed....
If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Read more about Zando and Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP Lit: https://zandoprojects.com/imprints/sjp-lit/
Read the entirety of Marilyn Chin's poem "How I Got that Name"
Read the title poem of Denis Johnson's collection The Incognito Lounge.
You can read more about the poet 'Annah Sobelman here, including a few poems.
Randall Jarrell's poem "Losses" appeared in August 1944 issue of Poetry Magazine. It is the title poem of his 1948 book (Harcourt). You can read Jarrell's NY Times obit here.

Make Myself a Myth (guest Jericho Brown on Reginald Shepherd) Apr 15, 2024

Show notes

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
You can purchase The Selected Shepherd edited by Jericho Brown directly from the press at: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948216/
Check out Jericho Brown's website. Read the title poem from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Tradition here.
Reginald Shepherd's blog can be found online here. The specific posts on the AWP Panel "Gay Male Poetry: Post Identity Politics?" Can be found here:
Part 1
Part 2
Shepherd also wrote a post for Harriet, the blog for the Poetry Foundation, as he was getting ready to deliver the panel. You can read that post here.
Robert Philen's remarks about Reginald Shepherd's memoir were delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society in 2013. You can read them here.
In the show, Jericho references Frank O'Hara being gay/putting phallic things around his mouth. You can read O'Hara's poem "Homosexuality" here.
Richard Hugo's book of essays The Triggering Town was published in 1979 and reissued in 2010. You can read an essay from the book about "the triggering subject" here.
Read Reginald Shepherd's poem "Syntax."
Watch Shepherd read his poems at Berry College here. (~1 hour.) Poems include "Difficult Music," "White Sargasso Sea," "Slaves," "The Friend," "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," "Unused," "Tantalus in May," "Maritime," and "The Gods at 3am" (at the 30:55 min mark).

Love at First Hate Apr 08, 2024

Show notes

The queens love to love you--but it didn't always start out like that. Stick around for our game: "Pulitzer Prize Winning Titles from an Alternate Universe."
Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
If you have library access, Ena Jung's 2015 article "The Breath of Emily Dickinson's Dashes" is worth the time.
Watch Bill Murray read two of the more obscure Wallace Stevens poems here.

Watch Jonathan Pryce read Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"
Watch James Wright read some of his iconic poems, including "A Blessing" (at 33:15--he calls the poem "a description") here.
John Ashbery's Flow Chart is a book-length poem comprising 4,794 lines, divided into six numbered chapters, each of which is further divided into sections or verse-paragraphs, varying in number from seven to 42. The sections vary in length from one or two lines, to seven pages. It includes at least one double-sestina (and one of them references oral sex between men).
Hear Linda Gregg read and be interviewed in 1986 (~25 mins).
Here's a quick book-trailer of C. Dale Young's The Halo, including a reading of one of the poems by Young.
Listen to a few minutes of Archibald Macleish's Conquistador here.
We can recommend Peter Maber's 2008 article about John Berryman's Dream Songs, "'So-called black': Reassessing John Berryman’s Blackface Minstrelsy" as a good starting place to think about the racism in that book.
Jazz Age poet, translator, and Poetry editor George Dillon was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1906.
At 24, Audrey Wurdemann is the youngest person to win the poetry Pulitzer (for Bright Ambush). Read a few poems here.
Read Robert P. Tristram Coffin's poem "Messages"
Here's Mark Strand reading "Sleeping With One Eye Open"
We reference Stevie Nicks (a Gemini) singing her iconic song "Landslide"
Winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin controversially included letters from Elizabeth Hardwick (Lowell's former wife). The letters were sent to him after he left her for the English socialite and writer Caroline Blackwood. He was warned by many, among them Elizabeth Bishop, that “art just isn’t worth that much.”

Fan Fic Apr 01, 2024

Show notes

The queens remake the endings of iconic poems, then play a round of "Gay or Homophobic?"
Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Read William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Or hear it read by Dame Helen Mirren here.

Read Emily Dickinson's Poem 479 ("Because I could not stop for death"). James makes a reference to Linda Gregg's iconic "The Poet Goes About Her Business."
Hear Creeley read "I Know a Man" here and read the text of the poem here.
Here's the text of Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Watch Ponyboy in The Outsiders recite the poem here. Stay golden, Ponyboy.
In the episode, James recites the last line of Robert Pinksy's "Shirt."
We love this interview where Jericho Brown talks about line breaks (starting at the 7-minute mark).

Outside the Lines Mar 25, 2024

Show notes

Aaron spills the tea about recording a spoken word album, then the queens get on all fours for some Poet Sex Positions. Woof woof, darlings!
Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.

You can find Aaron's Outside the Lines album here on iTunes. You can listen here to Aaron Smith's "Outside the Lines," the title poem of his spoken word album.
The Partridge Family is an American musical sitcom created by Bernard Slade, which aired September 25, 1970, to August 24, 1974, on ABC. Watch the pilot episode here. Its stars included Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Susan Day, and Danny Bonaduce. The family was loosely based on the real-life musical family the Cowsills, a popular band in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The verse sung by Aaron and Belinda which proceeds Aaron's poem "Pray the Gay Away" – "at the cross, at the cross" is from the hymn "Alas, and did my Savior bleed." "Pray the Gay Away" appears in Aaron's most recent book, Stop Lying, which you can purchase at the link above.
Aaron's poem "After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong About the Sadness of Men Who Love Men" can be read online at the Poetry Society, followed by a short essay Aaron wrote about writing the poem.
Sister Act 2 has a subtitle and it is: Back in the Habit. It stars It starred Lauryn Hill in her breakout role, as well as Sheryl Lee Ralph and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Watch Lauryn Hill sing "Joyful Joyful."
Watch Linda Pastan read her poem, "Why are Your Poems So Dark?" (The announcer lets us know that she won a poetry prize from Mademoiselle -- the runner up was Sylvia Plath.)

The King Is Dead (with guest Diane Seuss) Mar 18, 2024

Show notes

It's a queens' jubilee as we discuss Clifton and Glück poems with Diane Seuss, who concludes by reading a new poem!
Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Diane Seuss's MODERN POETRY is available now from Graywolf Press.
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
Louise Glück's first book is Firstborn, published in 1968 when she was 25. You can read "Here Are My Black Clothes"
Recorded on March 27, 2023, here is one of Louise Glück's final recorded readings (~15 minutes).

Read the text of Lucille Clifton "Study the Masters." You can see Tara Betts read that poem here.
Watch an interview with Prof. Clifton here.
You can read more about the first crafting, and subsequent replications, of Keats's death masks here.

Satan Says Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

Get ready to unlock your box with the Breaking Form queens as they discuss Sharon Olds's icon poem, "Satan Says"

Read the text of "Satan Says" here.
Check out the wild facts about Valerie Bertinelli on her IMDB page!
Read Sharon Olds's poem, "I Go Back to May 1937"
Here's a famous "Church Chat" sketch with Dana Carvey as Enid Strict, aka the Church Lady, with guests Jim and Tammy Faye Baker (played by Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks).
And, lastly, check out Aaron Smith's short essay "The Very Act of Telling" here.

Queer Eye for the Str8 Poet Mar 04, 2024

Show notes

Join the gals for the queer makeover you secretly knew straight cis guy poetry needed.

Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.

The word zhuzh is part of Polari, an argot used in Britain since perhaps the 18th century, primarily among gay theatrical and circus performers. Given the lack of a clear origin, it is impossible to tell if the verb has priority over the noun or vice versa.
Jai Rodriguez was the original Culture Vulture for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Follow him on Instagram @jairodriguez or check out his IMDB page here.
Read Charles Wright's poem " Sitting at Night on the Front Porch." In 2015, Charles Wright gave an interview with the Yale News in which he said that writing is "very difficult now, because I’ve probably written all the things I could possibly have to say at least five times, in five different directions. I don’t want to do it now." He also talks about it in this interview with Image.
Read the poem of Charles Simic's that we discuss in the episode: "My Shoes." You can also read the poem Aaron references: "Fork."
Read W.S. Merwin's poem "Language."

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