Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Defiant Acts of Joy (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 1) Jan 09, 2023

Show notes

We talk defiance, joy, and Dolly Parton's closet in Part 1 of our interview with poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick. Buy Lynn's books here!
Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, from the University of Texas Press's American Music Series/Spiegel & Grau Audio (October 2022). She is also the author of three poetry collections, Refusenik(2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books. She co-edited the volume Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Check out her website here.

Dolly Parton starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the movie Rhinestone (1984), a musical based on the 1975 hit song "Rhinestone Cowboy" written by Larry Weiss. Although a critical and financial failure, the film spawned two top 10 country hits for Parton.
Read more about Lucie Brock-Broido on her website here, at the Poetry Foundation here, or read her poem "Domestic Mysticism" here.
Watch the clip of Reese Witherspoon / Dolly Parton’s tea-and-closet moment referenced in the show (and in Lynn’s book).
Learn more (and donate to) the Sex Workers Project, a national organization advocating for the human rights of sex workers and others, at https://swp.urbanjustice.org

The Great Unsayable Sex Workshop Jan 02, 2023

Show notes

Pour your New Year mimosas, cuz we're playing Roethke or Rothko before "Things You can Say in Workshop, and in Bed."
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.
You can read a really terrific profile of Mark Rothko (b. 9/25/03) here.

Theodore Roethke was born on May 25, 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan. Read more about him here or watch this 30-min documentary about his poetry and life.
Another short film made about Roethke (with clips of him reading from poems including : "The Adamant," "My Pappa's Waltz," "Dolor," "Cuttings, later," "The Walking," "The Sloth," "Elegy for Jane," "To An Amorous Woman," "In a Dark Time," "The Abyss," "Light Listened," "A Rouse for Wallace Stevens," "Gob Music," and "Once More for the Road") can be found here.

Text of some of the Roethke poems we mention can be found in the following links:
The Waking
In a Dark Time
The Signals
Rothko's Seagram Murals, commissioned in 1958 and finished around 1960, never hung in the Seagram Building, where the Four Seasons restaurant was located. To read more about Rothko’s Seagram Murals, click here.

You can visit the Rothko Chapel in Houston, or online here.

Rothko's Yellow # 10 (1957) which hangs in the Menil Collection in Houston is seen in a photograph here or here (scroll down to the 2nd yellow painting)

If you need a primer on sex slang, we've got you covered with this educational guide.

Living in Clips Dec 26, 2022

Show notes

Get your nightcap ready for this recap as the queens relive their favorite clips from a year of Breaking Form.
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.

69 (Anniversary) Dec 19, 2022

Show notes

The Anniversary Episode has the queens recapping interviews and impact from a year of Breaking Form!
Aaron's new book, STOP LYING, is available for pre-order (and arrives January 2023). Order STOP LYING from the Pitt Poetry Series here.
James's new book, ROMANTIC COMEDY, is available for preorder (releasing March 2023). Order Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books here.
Miguel Murphy's most recent book, Shoreditch, can be purchased through Barrow Street.
Buy Denise Duhamel's books, including her most recent book, Second Story, here.
Get David Trinidad's new book, Digging to Wonderland: Memory Pieces, here.
Diane Seuss's Pulitzer-prize-winning book frank: sonnets can be purchased here.
Carl Phillips published two new books this year: Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 is available here; a book of essays called My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing can be ordered here.
Maureen Seaton can be found online here. And you can buy Maureen's books from Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned indie bookstore.
Visit Jacques J. Rancourt online at his website: https://www.jacquesrancourt.com, and buy Brocken Spectre from Alice James here.
C. Russell Price's book, Oh, You Thought This Was a Date?!: Apocalypse Poems, is available here from Northwestern University Press.

Before You Were a Story Dec 12, 2022

Show notes

Aaron and James talk about becoming storytellers -- and survivors.
Marie Howe’s poem “Gretel, From a Sudden Clearing” was first published in Agni 1987, then in her first book, The Good Thief, selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series (Persea, 1988). The other poem that Aaron mentions from the book is "Isaac."
Watch a reading and conversation with Marie Howe here (~30 min). Poet Sandra Beasley hosts the conversation, which is sponsored by the Howard County (MD) Poetry & Literature Society.
Aaron's poem "After My Mother Apologized for My Childhood, We Went to Brunch" can be read here.
You can pre-order Aaron's book here or directly through the publisher.

You can watch one of the most terrific scenes in Steel Magnolias here. Truvey Jones says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" at the 8:30 mark. Watch the cast of Steel Magnolias interviewed on the Donahue show in 1989 here (~40 min)

You can listen to Ani DiFranco's fabulous recording of her song "Angry Anymore" here.
Watch the official music video for Debbie Gibson's “Lost in Your Eyes” official music video here.

Statements and Questions Dec 05, 2022

Show notes

The queens get stately in this episode devoted to poetic queries and statements.
Please consider supporting the poets we mention by buying their books at an indie bookstore. We can recommend Loyalty Books, a black-owned DC-area bookseller.
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. It's essential reading.
You can read the entire Linda McCarriston poem, “Healing the Mare” here.
Read Chen Chen’s “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” (first published in Pank)here. Chen’s book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (selected by Jericho Brown) and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. Follow him on Twitter @chenchenwrites and visit his official website.
Read “Effort at Speech Between Two People” by Muriel Rukeyser here.
Watch Erika Meitner, Victoria Redel, and Patricia Smith here (~90 min)
Cortney Lamar Charleston’s book Dopplegangbangers is his second book, published by Haymarket Books in 2021. His first book is Telepathologies, winner of the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Visit his website here.
Read Larry Levis’s poem “In the City of Light" here.
Read Jennifer L. Knox’s poem “Old Women Talking About Death” here. Another of her great poems: “how to manage your adult adhd” appears here in American Poetry Review. Visit Knox's website here.

Brenda Hillman's website can be visited here. You can read “First Thought” (from the book Bright Existence) here. And watch her read from multiple books in this 2013 reading here (~17 min).

Mark Doty writes about the class he shared with Brenda Hillman on his blog here.

World AIDS Day: Listening for My Name Dec 01, 2022

Show notes

Aaron and James read work by writers we've lost to AIDS in this bonus episode.
According to the website for World AIDS Day, more than 38 million people are currently living with HIV. And, since 1984, more than 35 million people have died of HIV or AIDS-related illnesses, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history. Donate here.
Please consider buying the books of the poets we honor! We recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a DC-area Black-owned bookshop.
We dedicated a Breaking Form Episode ("The Invisible Embrace") to Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995). Monette was the author of 4 novels, 3 books of nonfiction, and 4 books of poems, including a New and Selected Poems called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to AIDS on February 10, 1995.
Read more about Essex Hemphill here, and "American Wedding" (the poem Aaron reads during the show) here. He published 2 chapbooks and 2 books of poetry, and edited the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Hemphill died of complications from AIDS in 1995. Watch a short film written and performed by Hemphill called "From the Anacostia to the Potomac" here (~15 min)
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller (March 2, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress and writer who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters's early films, including Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. Mueller wrote columns and criticism for magazines and papers, and released several books as well, including a memoir, Garden of Ashes. A short film of remembrances about Mueller can be seen here. In April 2022, Semiotext(e) released Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories.
Iris de la Cruz inspired the foundation Iris House. You can read more about Iris and the foundation here. De la Cruz died in 1991, leaving a 15-year legacy of fighting for health rights for women/femmes living with HIV. Hear the entire essay James reads ("Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and AIDS”) in this video here. (TW for anachronistic language regarding sex work.)
David Michael Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist. He died in 1992, having written more than 10 books (including Close to the Knives, from which Aaron reads), exhibited his visual art all over the world, and directed at least two films.

Melvin Dixon was born on May 29, 1950 and died October 26, 1992. He authored two poetry collections: Change of Territory and the posthumous Love's Instruments. His novels were Vanishing Rooms and Trouble the Water. He translated The Collected Poems of Leopold Senghor. You can watch Danez Smith read a poem by Melvin Dixon here. Read more work by Dixon here.
Tim Dlugos was born in 1950 and died in 1990. Dlugos authored at least 8 books, including the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. Read more work here.

Doomsday (with C. Russell Price) Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

C. Russell Price joins us for the Breaking Form Interview and talks doom, Designing Women, and why you should never read the comments on the internet.
Price is the author of Oh, You Thought This was a Date?!: Apocalypse Poems, which can be purchased from Northwestern University Press here. Their chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other, is available from Sibling Rivalry Press here.
Read here the entire text of How To Stay Politically Active While Fucking The Existential Dread Away (first published in Pank; scroll down).

Watch this short (~7 min) reading by C. Russell while they were a Lambda Literary Fellow.

Read Claudia Rankine’s Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry here. The Academy notes: “This conversation was presented by the Academy of American Poets at the Associated Writing Programs Conference on February 4, 2011. Claudia Rankine began her talk with a reading of Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change." She then presented the following dialogue.”

James’s favorite Jessica Simpson song is “I Wanna Love You Forever.” Watch the official music video for that song here (4:18).

4 Non Blondes was an American alternative rock band active from 1989-1994. Their only album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!, spent 59 weeks on the Billboard 200 and sold 1.5 million copies. You can watch the video for their smash ICONIC hit, “What’s Up,” here. Linda Perry wrote and sang lead on that hit.

Watch some of the best Golden Girls moments here (~43 min). And then watch some of Designing Women’s best moments here (~23 min).

Gay codes have included a handkerchief code, a whole language called Polari, and symbols (elucidated here by a 1985 issue of Sappho Speaks). You can watch a short film, “Putting on the Dish,” written in Polari here (~6:30 min).

Important resources for survivors of sexual assault and abuse can be found at RAINN. Peer resources for trans and nonbinary people can be found at the Trans Lifeline, which is divested from police and run entirely by trans folks.

When James says that gender is a copy for which there is no original, he is paraphrasing Judith Butler’s argument in her article, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” which argues that gender and sexuality are always performative and also always being performed. The repeated acts that encode gender are like a script, and that script gets copied and passed around, but there is no original script. “In other words,” Butler writes, “the naturalistic effects of heterosexualized genders are produced through imitative strategies; what they imitate is a phantasmatic ideal of heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect.” You can read the whole (short) essay here.

Personal Anthology Nov 21, 2022

Show notes

The queens discuss the ICONIC poems that are near and queer to their hearts.
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.
You can read Carl Phillips's poem, "X," from In the Blood, here.
Listen to Louise Glück read "The Mirror" here and read the text here.
Read "Satan Says" by Sharon Olds here.
In an October 2022 NY Times profile of Sharon Olds, she declares she has a "real simile brain,” explaining further: “My brain sees in similes.” According to Sam Anderson (who wrote the profile), Olds "has never been comfortable saying definitively, as metaphors do, that something is something else. She ascribes this to her terrifying childhood experience of religion, the idea that blood was wine, that body was bread. To this day, she clings to the comforting distance of that “like.” Blood is like wine, yes; body is like bread, sure — in the same way that a poem is like a real experience but not the thing itself. In the same way that death is like birth, sorrow is like joy, a poet is like a host, an ending is like a beginning. To have a simile brain, as Olds does, is to live in a world of radical interconnection, a world in which nothing stands alone, nothing is ever only itself. And yet everything, in that vast network of mutual meanings, is allowed to remain exactly itself." You can read the whole profile here.
Also, we reference it enough in this show that here's a recording of Sharon Olds reading "I Go Back to May 1937."
The lecture of Linda Gregg's I reference is a craft talk she gave at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. It is titled "Craft of the Invisible." Listen to it here (~30 minutes).

Laura Kasischke's poem "The Ugliness" appears in Prairie Schooner (Vol. 76, Issue 1, 2002). You can watch her interviewed on a hometown vlog called "Around Town with Linda" here (~35 min).
Watch Rita Dove read "After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed" here (~3 minutes).
You can read Thomas Centolella's “The Orders” here.

Read Denis Johnson's “Now” here.
If you'd like to read more about Christopher Bursk, go here.
Len Roberts's poem "The Problem" appeared with 8 other poems in American Poetry Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (MARCH/APRIL 2001).
Read Etheridge Knight's incredible poem “Feeling Fucked Up” here.
You can read two of Jen Jabaily-Blackburn's poems in Couplet Poetry here.

Pet Project Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

Hot goss about Victorian poet(s) Michael Field precedes a conversation about the deep loss of animals, and the intimacy, friendship, and love we share with them.
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.
We reference a scene from the show Yellowstone where Beth tells her son Carter
the universal truths of getting money. You can watch that clip here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=118&v=a68StSECIGI&feature=emb_logo
Read more criticism and biography about Michael Field here.
Read more poems by Michael Field here.
Links to poems we read during this episode include:
Jane Kenyon's "Biscuit"
Paisley Rekdal's "Once"
Bruce Weigl's "May"
We'll add to this list of other poems about the love we give to and receive from animals here. Suggest some on our social media.
Carl Phillips: "Something to Believe In"
Marie Howe: "Buddy"
Mark Doty: "Golden Retrievals"
Victoria Redel: "The Pact"
Mary Oliver: "Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night" (see Oliver read it here).
Kevin Young: "Bereavement"
Nomi Stone: "Waiting for Happiness"
Robert Duncan: "A Little Language"
Pattiann Rogers, "Finding the Cat in a Spring Field at Midnight"
William Matthews, "Loyal"
Christopher Smart, "from Jubilate Agno (for I will consider my cat Joffrey...)"
The Humane Society suggests a few coping strategies for dealing with the loss of a loved pet:

Acknowledge your grief and give yourself permission to express it.
Don't hesitate to reach out to others who can lend a sympathetic ear. Do a little research online and you'll find hundreds of resources and support groups that may be helpful to you.
Write about your feelings, either in a journal or a poem, essay, or short story.
Call your veterinarian or local humane society to see whether they offer a pet-loss support group or hotline, or can refer you to one.
Prepare a memorial for your pet.

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