Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Bones of Power (with special guest Diane Seuss) Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

In every symptom is a seed of power, ladies! Diane Seuss joins to talk Adrienne Rich and Gwendolyn Brooks.
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.
Diane's MODERN POETRY is available March 5, 2024 from Graywolf Press.
Read Adrienne Rich's poem about Marie Curie: "Power." You can hear Cheryl Strayed read the poem and discuss it here. Or listen to Adrienne Rich read the poem here.
Read Gwendolyn Brooks's "the mother." You can hear Brooks read "the mother" here.
Women in Therapy is Harriet G. Lerner's book published by Harper and Row.
We reference Plath's poem "Edge" from our recent Galentine's episode (listen here!)
Watch this 1986 interview with Gwendolyn Brooks conducted by Alan Jabbour, director of the Library of Congress' American Folklore division, and E. Ethelbert Miller, poet and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University (~30min).

Hanky Code Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

The ladies reach into your back pocket to talk gay hanky codes and the poets they ASSociate with them.
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.
Bob Damron's Address Book was actually published in 1964 and hand-sold by Bob Damron. Read more about the Damron Guide here.
Read Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California"
Buy Stephanie Brown's Allegory of the Supermarket from The Ivy Bookshop (one of Baltimore's best indie bookstores!). The book was first published by U of Georgia Press (1999).
Beckian Fritz Goldberg's book referenced in the show is Never Be the Horse (U Akron Press, 1999). Read a recent suite of Goldberg's poems here in Plume.Watch Goldberg give a reading here (~30 min).
James references one of the first viral videos, Kelly's song "Shoes." Read more about the cultural impact of the video here.

Galentine's Day (with Guest Diane Seuss) Feb 12, 2024

Show notes

The ladies are joined by the Queen herself, Diane Seuss, to spread some love for Galentine's Day.
Support Breaking Form!
Review the showon Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Diane Seuss's MODERN POETRY is available March 5, 2024 from Graywolf Press.
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDYis available from Four Way Books.
We discuss Aaron Smith's Book of Daniel , and you can check that book out here.
Read Marianne Moore's "No Swan So Fine," first published in Poetry Magazine in October 1932.
Read Moore's famous and oft-anthologized poem "Poetry" and then read Slate's article about her revisions of that poem: "Marianne Moore's 5-decade Struggle with 'Poetry'"

If you haven't dipped your toe into the fabulous Marianne Moore pool yet, here's Interesting Literature's "10 of the Best Marianne Moore Poems Everyone Should Read"

A great essay on Moore's difficulty was published in Lithub here.
George Platt Lynes took an iconic photo of Marianne Moore in her tricorn hat and cape in 1953. Read more about Lynes and his iconic photos of poets here.

Read Sylvia Plath's poem "The Munich Mannequin" (briefly mentioned in the episode) here. And listen to Plath recite it here.
Read Plath's poem "Edge" and hear Jane Gilbert recite "Edge" here (~1.5 min)

Discover "59 Years of Book Covers for The Bell Jar" (a fascinating read in Lithub).

Dead Poets Society Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

The queens discuss some unusual, at times outlandish (or downright made-up), and unfortunate ends some poets have met.

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 Charlotte Brontë (including some of her poems) here.
Brad Gooch's biography of Keith Haring is called Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, and like Diane Seuss's book Modern Poetry, is releasing on March 5, 2024.
Here's a cartoon rendition of the totally made-up story of Aeschylus's death.
Francis Bacon died after contracting a chill, which he developed after stuffing a chicken full of snow. Read some of his--Bacon's, not the chicken's--poems here.
Read some Oscar Wilde poems here.
To read more about Christopher Marlowe and also some of his poems, click here.
Here's an entertaining and educational video about Dante Alighieri.
Watch a (kinda long but totally worth it, girl) documentary about Zelda Fitzgerald (60 min). Also, read Aria Aber's poem "Zelda Fitzgerald" here.
You can read some of Rupert Brooke's best poems here.
Read more about Frank O'Hara's tragic death on Fire Island here.
As outlined in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Keats, who was often in poor health, was regularly in contact with one of the deadliest diseases of his day: tuberculosis. Keats cared for his infected brother, Tom, before contracting the disease, then known as consumption, himself. As his illness took hold, Keats relocated to Italy in the hope that the climate would have a positive effect on his ailments. He was buried in Rome, where his gravestone describes him as "one whose name was writ in water." Read more here.
Here's a great 10-minute talk on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Watch Suzanne Somers's Thighmaster commercial here.

Red Flags Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

The queens issue a BOLO for poetry red flags before getting around to a satisfying Jack-Off.
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.
Watch Lucie Brock-Broido read her poem "You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World," from Stay, Illusion at the National Book Award Finalists' reading (~3 min).
Whitney Houston performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" on January 27, 1991. (We recorded the fact-check for this episode 33 years to the day from that performance!) Watch Whitney sing it here. And then watch Cher's rendition here.
The Friends episode "The One with the Joke" aired Jan 13, 2000 in Season 6, Episode 12. You can watch the clip we reference here (~4 min).
Poems by Laura Riding Jackson we quote from include:
"The World and I"
"The Spring Has Many Silences"
"Voices"
Listen to Laura Riding Jackson read her poems at the U. of Florida in 1975 (~30 min).
Poems by Jack Spicer we quote from include:
"Helen: A Revision"
"Concord Hymn"
"A Poem For Dada Day At The Place April 1, 1958"
Just for fun, check out this fabulous reading of Spicer's "For Mac," read by CA Conrad (~2 min). The last line is utterly devastating.
Here's a compilation of Sandra stealing the scenes of 227 with just one word: MARY.

Your Next Seduction Jan 22, 2024

Show notes

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.
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.
Read Rick Hilles's "A Visionary's Company"
Listen to Seduction's hit song "Two To Make It Right." Of the six songs on the 13-track Bodyguard soundtrack, Whitney Houston sings 6. Michelle Visage's group The S.O.U.L.S.Y.S.T.E.M. performs "It's Going to Be a Lovely Day" on the album.

Read Linda Bierds's poem "Ghost Trio"
Watch a live performance of Tori Amos's "Putting the Damage On." Check out the Tori-licious website Toriphoria, containing all things Amos.

Rita Dove's poem "Soup" is from her latest collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse and you can listen to her reading it here.
Read Jane Kenyon's poem "Three Songs at the End of Summer"
Read Robert Penn Warren's poem "Tell Me a Story." Watch Natasha Trethewey's final lecture in her 2-term Poet Laureateship, "The World of Action and Liability: On Saying What Happens," in which she contends with Penn Warren, violent and racist histories, and the role of poetry in social justice. (1 hour). Trethewey later published the text of the lecture under the title "The Quarrel With Ourselves."
Listen/watch Ani DiFranco's fabulous "Untouchable Face"
Watch Sandra Cisneros read her poem "After a Quote from My Father."
Read Darnell Arnoult's "Outrageous Love."
Check out the fabulous Brenda Shaughnessy's poem "Card 19: The Sun."

Sex Lives of Poets: Eliot Jan 15, 2024

Show notes

It's the love song of J. Alfred Prufcock--er, Prufrock this week as the queens discuss the sex life of T.S. Eliot.

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.
Valerie Eliot died in 2012 at age 86. Her net worth was about 17.5 million dollars. She first memorized Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" at 14, and from the age of 18 she tried to get into his orbit, even going to the same church and then becoming his secretary at Faber & Faber. You can read her obit here.
You can read Eliot's letters to Emily Hale for free here.
The tea about Eliot's letters are here and here.
Read Louis Menad's "The Women Come and Go" in The New Yorker, which forms the basis of many of the facts we detail in the episode.
Another New Yorker article by William H. Pritchard that focuses particularly on the relationship between Haigh-Wood and Eliot is "The Hollow Man and His Wife."
This Guardian article discusses Vivienne's diaries.

Frankly Jan 08, 2024

Show notes

Get frankly franking frank with the queens this week--then let's talk about sex, baby!
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 Frank O'Hara. And read here about Tim Dlugos.

Frank O'Hara wrote "Personism: A Manifesto" that was both manifesto and send-up of manifestos. In it, he advocates for poems that sound like they've got a real person in mind as an audience. In one part of it, he writes, "You just go on your nerve'." You can read the whole manifesto here.

Read O'Hara's poem "F. (Missive & Walk) I. 53" which appeared in The Paris Review in Summer 1970.
Read O'Hara's "Pearl Harbor"
Watch the official video for the INXS song "Suicide Blonde" ( which includes the line, "You want to make her suicide blonde") here.
Read Diane Seuss talk about O'Hara in this Adroit Journal interview: "On Frank O'Hara and Marilyn Monroe."
Frank O'Hara's poem "Avenue A" begins "we hardly ever see the moon anymore." Read the whole poem.
Hear Tim Dlugos read "The Nineteenth Century is 183 Years Old"
Read a review of Tim Dlugos's collected poems edited by David Trinidad called A Fast Life.
In the segment "Sex Lives of Poets" we mention the following books/poets:
Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours & Glass, Irony and God
Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman
Megan Fernandes, I Do Everything I'm Told
Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Never Be the Horse
Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
francine j. harris, Play Dead
Tom Healey, What the Right Hand Knows
Brenda Hillman, Loose Sugar
Thylias Moss, Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler
Naomi Shihab Nye, Mint Snowball
Mary Oliver, Thirst
Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
Kevin Prufer, The Finger Bone & Strange Wood
Adrienne Rich, Diving Into the Wreck
Wesley Rothman, Subwoofer

Queer-Ass Poems Jan 01, 2024

Show notes

The queens help you start your new year off right: with some fierce, unapologetic, fabulous queer writers!
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.
J Jennifer Espinoza's first full-length collection of poems, I Don't Want to Be Misunderstood, is available for pre-order at Alice James Books and will be released in 2024. You can read her poem "Birthday Suits" here.
Read James L. White's "Making Love to Myself." The poem is included in White's book The Salt Ecstasies, published postmortem by Graywolf in 1982.
You can follow Deon Robinson on Instagram: @djrthepoet and read more about him here.
Check out Celeste Gainey (we read her incredible poem "In Our Nation's Capital" on the show) at her website: https://celestegainey.com
Elise D'Haene is Celeste's screenwriter, novelist, and professor partner, and you can read more about her here.
Read Justin Chin's obit. And read his epic poem "Lick My Butt." Watch Chin read his poem "The Glitters" here (~2.5 min).
Read Dennis Cooper's "After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade." You can watch Dennis Cooper interviewed on More Than a Mouthful: Queer Culture TV here.

Winter Poems Dec 25, 2023

Show notes

The queens have a mind of winter in this showcase of iconically cold poems. Ice, ice, baby!
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 "Those Winter Sundays" or listen to Robert Hayden read it here. Read more about A Ballad of Remembrance.
Read Robert Frost's poem "Birches." Frost reads it (audio only) here (~3 minutes).

You can read "More" by Marie Howe here.
Watch a sock puppet read Timothy Liu's poem "Winter" -- because like why not? Poetry is for puppets, too, girl. Or read the text of it here.
Read Jennifer Chang's "The World."
Here is Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter."
Read "Paul Revere's Ride" here.

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