Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Frank Other Frank Nov 07, 2022

Show notes

Frankly, our dears, all we want is boundless love for Frank O'Hara. We also discuss radical poetic embodiment, and ponder whether or not Dickinson's "Wild Nights" (269) is a fisting poem.

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.
Frank O’Hara was born Francis Russell O'Hara in Baltimore, MD, but grew up near Worcester, MA. As a kid, he studied music in hopes of being a concert pianist. After a stint in the navy (shocking!) he went to Harvard, where Edward Gorey was his roommate. Imagine what those bunk sessions were like.
Watch Jenny Xie read “My Heart” here (~1.5 min).
Read O’Hara’s “Ave Maria” here, and “you will have made the little tykes/ so happy....”
There's a film called "Wild Nights with Emily" (watch a 10 minute clip here), starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson. The film's description says it is informed by Dickinson's private letters and is a "timely critique of how women's history is rewritten."
Watch Ruth Stone read her poem "Where I Came From" here (~2 min).
For more about Beverly Pepper's work, watch this brief (2 min) video. Pepper died in 2020.
We reference an Instagram video post that Jorie Graham made about Pepper (her mother) making art. The post is captioned thusly: "My mother beginning to draw again with a partly mended broken arm. She holds one arm with the other for a moment, as if her wounded arm is a tool. Certainly she knew enough to know her wound was always her tool. She is so comfortable because Greg Whitmore is behind the camera, but, after a point, she is gone from us—all of us—I can see it as it happens—because she totally enters the work. It used to scare me as a child when she disappeared from this realm, and went into that one. It was strange to realize that there WAS an other realm into which one could go. Into which I could lose her. Of course, years later, I realized it was one of the greatest gifts she gave me. When she would leave me “alone” in this world knowing I had to find the other world in this one & find my way to it. Which is one’s fate. And one’s journey." You can see the post here.
The video in the post was made in 2014 and can also be watched online here.

Game Day w/ David Trinidad and Denise Duhamel Oct 31, 2022

Show notes

Just the tip-off! You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll win $50 in breakcoin (more crypto than currency). Polish up your high-heel cleats and get out your pompoms!

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.

Writing for the Ploughshares blog, Robert Anthony Siegel calls Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book “a progenitor of the fragmentary, nonlinear, hybrid-genre work....” Read the whole, short essay here.

You can watch Elaine Equi read four poems from Big Other here (~4.5 mins). And read more about this fabulous poet’s bio here.

Hear Plath read “November Graveyard” here (~1 min)

Hear Plath read “Poppies in October” here (~1 min)

Plath reads the Rabbit Catcher here (~1.5 min)

Plath reads “The Applicant” here (~2 min)

Watch a beautifully-read, dramatic rendering of “Crossing the Water” here (~1 min)

Audio of Plath reading Lady Lazarus can be heard here (~3 min)

Watch Clara Sismondo perform “Blackberrying” (National Poetry in Voice) here (~3 min)

Hear “Tulips” in Plath’s voice here (~4.5 min)

Watch this arresting short film of “Death & Co” produced by Troublemakers TV here (~1.5 min)

You can read “The Couriers” here.

Read “The Colossus” here.

Hear Plath read “Daddy” here (~4 min)

Read “Electra on Azalea Path” here

Read “The Babysitters” here

Read “The Beekeeper’s Daughter” here

Read “Winter Trees” here

You can read this fascinating essay about acquiring Plath’s table by David Trinidad here.
Listen to David talk with scholar Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, about the light and dark sequences in Plath’s life.

Watch Dorianne Laux read a very recent poem “What's Broken” here (~2 min)

You can attend virtually this fabulous Terrance Hayes reading at the University of Chicago (~1 hour)

Uh-Oh Plutonium! Oct 24, 2022

Show notes

Uh-oh! The queens dish poetry playboys and punk rock goddesses! It's like an episode of Gossip Girl, but make it poetry....
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.
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, known simply as Lord Byron, was immensely popular during his time. More info about him and his bisexuality can be found here. You can read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage here.
Lord Byron apparently referred to Wordsworth as “Turdsworth.”

Buffering the Vampire Slayer is a Buffy podcast hosted by Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristin Russo. Each episode of the podcast also includes a new original song recapping a separate, glorious Buffy episode.
Anne Waldman’s website is http://www.annewaldman.org. She has a new book of essays, interviews, letters, and poems entitled Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2022).
"UH-OH PLUTONIUM!" can be watched, rewatched, and watched again and again here (~3.5 min).

Read this wonderful profile of Edward Said in the New Yorker.
Juliette Lewis describes how influential Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet was for her in this Spin interview (from 2009).
Plutonium is the element with the highest atomic number to occur in nature.
Watch Waldman give some advice to young poets here (~3 min).

The Invisible Embrace Oct 17, 2022

Show notes

The queens discuss breaking open the closet doors through the work of Paul Monette.
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.
Paul Monette (October 16, 1945--February 10, 1995) was the author of at least 4 novels: Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978), The Gold Diggers (1979), Afterlife (1990), and Halfway Home (1991). He also wrote Sanctuary, a fable, which was illustrated by Vivienne Flesher and published posthumously in 1997.

His first nonfiction book, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) received a National Book Critic's Circle Award nomination and won a Lambda Literary Award. His second memoir is Becoming a Man; his third book of nonfiction is Last Watch of the Night, published in 1994.

His books of poems are The Carpenter at the Asylum, in 1975; No Witness (1981), and Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (1988). His New and Selected Poems is called West of Yesterday, East of Summer (1994). He died of complications due to aids on February 10, 1995.

Watch Monette's iconic 1994 appearance on the Charlie Rose show here (~20 minutes).

Watch this terrific wide-ranging interview with Paul Monette conducted in September 1993 by Sheila James Kuehl (1 hour).

You can see the poet Philip Clark, co-editor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, read Monette’s poem "Your Sightless Days” here. (~5 mins). Recorded live at Bloombars in Washington D.C., June 8, 2011.

The anthology that Aaron references is titled Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS. Aaron is right: Monette has 6 poems in that anthology, which was edited by Michael Klein.

The Best Little Boy in the World was published in 1973 under the pseudonym John Reid. The book was re-released in 1998 alongside its sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, under the author’s real name, Andrew Tobias.

Read an essay entitled “Paul Monette’s AIDS Poetry” at the Yale Review.

Poetry Karaoke Oct 10, 2022

Show notes

Karaoke may be where the party goes to die, but Poetry Karaoke will give you life!
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.
Constant Craving is a great song by kd lang. Read Marianne Moore's iconic poem "Poetry" here.
Show You the Shape of My Heart, Backstreet Boys. Watch a fabulous interview with Mona Van Duyn here (~30 min).
You can watch Robert Bly read three of his poems in his writing studio here (~5 min).
Watch Galway Kinnell give a reading and an interview about his influences here (~30 min). You can read his poem "The Bear" here.
Listen to Air Supply's "Sweet Dreams" here.
Here's an interview with Ron Silliman in which he discusses his relationship with Ezra Pound (~5 min).
Watch Kylie Minogue sing "Your Disco Needs You" live at Royal Albert Hall (~4 min). And you can watch the official video for "Into the Blue" here.
Watch Yusef Komunyakaa's answer to how writing and art has changed him here. (~3 min).
Here's Heart's "These Dreams" -- a great karaoke ballad!
Kevin Killian was interviewed in 2011 as part of the "Big Joy" collection at Georgia State University (~50 min).
Listen to Idina Menzel talk about her Wicked injury here.
Frankie and Ariana Grande cover "Seasons of Love" here. Or, since we mention a nuptial ceremony in the show, here's a wedding-party cover of the song with the most washed-out bridesmaids who ever did bridesmaid. (You're welcome, Aaron!)

De-Collins-izing Emily Dickinson Oct 03, 2022

Show notes

The shady ladies tackle a misogynistic poem about Emily Dickinson, then consult her tarot for responses. It's Tea, Shade, & Amherst Lemonade, so lace up your gloves and let's get into it!
The offending poem can be read here. For CA Conrad’s takedown of this poem (and some comments by Metres), see this blog post of Phil Metres’s here.

If you haven't read TERFy Adrienne Rich's essay on Dickinson, "Vesuvius at Home," it's worth your time here.

You can purchase the Divining Poets: Dickinson tarot deck here.

For more about the EBay auction of Dickinson's hair and the troublesome history of its possession, read this fascinating and disturbing article in LitHub.

The hair is still on eBay, and going for 450,000 as of this writing.

Amherst College holds the original of the only currently authenticated photograph of Emily Dickinson. The daguerreotype was included in Millicent Todd Bingham's gift of Dickinson material to Amherst College in 1956. Bingham acquired it from Wallace Keep (AC 1894) whose brother, Austin Baxter Keep (AC 1897), received the photograph directly from Lavinia Dickinson sometime in the 1890s. Read more here.
In an "Fresh Air" interview with Terry Gross, Collins details what "inspired" him to write the poem:
"I mean, I actually at one point, when there were so many books out about speculating particularly on Emily Dickinson's sexuality, you know, was she lesbian, was she celibate, did she have an affair, I was driven actually by all of that curiosity and speculation to write a poem called "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," in which I attempted, in a kind of playful way, to put the matter at rest by having sex with her.

Grief Motel (Pt. 2) Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

We all have to check in some time to the Grief Motel. The queens talk about grief and how poetry helps us cope.
Please support indie bookshops, like Loyalty Bookstores.
Aaron Smith’s new book, Stop Lying, is out on January 31, 2023 and is available for pre-order here.

You can buy James’s book of personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, here.

Watch Thom L. Higgins throw a pie in Anita Bryant's face here. He was one of four activists who disrupted the press conference (held on Oct. 14, 1978). Anita said, “At least it’s a fruit pie,” before she broke down into tears. Her husband immediately joined hands with Anita and said, “Anita, let’s pray for him.” Anita said, “We forgive you and we love you, and father, please deliver him from his demon lifestyle.” The husband said, “I don’t want this man harmed in any way,” and afterwards found found the queer activists out in the parking lot and threw some of the pie in one of their faces too. Read more about Higgins here and his papers here.

What Keeps Me Here by Rebecca Brown waspublished in 1996 by Harper Collins.

Watch this incredible interview with Lucy Grealey on The Charlie Rose Show (~15 min).
If you or someone you love needs some mental health resources:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has a hotline
(English and Spanish) as well as a list of resources.
American Counseling Association has some great articles on coping mechanisms for different kinds of grief here.
The Center for Grief Recovery and Therapeutic Services has a terrific resource guide here.
I recommend the The Trevor Project for LGBTQIA folks, though the Trans Lifeline is perhaps the best resource for TGNC folks.

Grief Motel (Pt. 1) Sep 19, 2022

Show notes

The queens discuss the craft of coping with grief.
James misattributes to Coleridge the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which defines poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." The real author is, of course, Wordsworth, who also writes: "I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind." Read the entire Preface here.
Aaron's book, Stop Lying, is available for pre-order here. It will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press Poetry Series on January 31. 2023.
James's book of lyric personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, is available here.
A terrific depot of mental health resources can be found at Mental Health America, an organization driven by its commitment to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all; early identification and intervention for those at risk; integrated care, services, and supports for those who need them; with recovery as the goal.
For trans and non-conforming gender folks, we recommend Trans Lifeline. They have a hotline (information here) where you can talk to a trans/nonbinary peer with full anonymity and confidentiality. They promise no nonconsensual active rescue (calling 911, emergency services, or law enforcement)

The Flame (interview w/ Maureen Seaton pt. 2) Sep 15, 2022

Show notes

Polish your crystal balls and buckle up, ladies! We get downright divinatory with Maureen Seaton leading the charge.
As always, please consider supporting the poets and writers we mention in the episode and buying indie! Breaking Form recommends Loyalty Booksellers, a Black-owned DC-area indie bookshop. Peruse them here.
Taurus poets mentioned in the Fact Check include Phillis Wheatley, Yannis Ritsos, Robert Browning, Joy Harjo, Natasha Trethewey, Randall Jarrell, Carolyn Forche, William Shakespeare, Jayne Cortez, and Aurelia Plath.
The archetype card deck we used in the podcast is "The Wild Unknown: Archetypes," deck and guidebook by Kim Krans, inpsired by Carl G. Jung. Two others that Maureen uses and recommends are "The Goddess Oracle," by Amy Sophia Marashinsky, illustrated by Hrana Janto; and "Daughters of the Moon Tarot," by Fiona Morgan.

Sylvia Plath’s poem is simply called “Mirror” and it begins, “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions./ Whatever I see I swallow immediately ....” Read it here.

Jewelle Gomez is a Virgo, born Sept. 11. Watch her give a reading on her birthday here (~12 min).

Kairos is Greek for “right time” or “season” and in modern parlance describes a rhetorical strategy that considers the timeliness of a message and its place in the zeitgeist. Like when we say, “In a patricia? During a panorama? In this economy?” We’re employing kairos. With thanks to the viral tik-tok user @hotdaddyissues, who's original video can be found here.

The poet Christopher Deweese writes and edits The Weather Channel's very entertaining Morning Brief. To sign up for the newsletter and learn delightful and informative things about weather every day, go here.

The Bangels’s “Eternal Flame” was co-written by lead singer Susanna Hoffs for their 1988 album Everything. Watch the video here.

Just Keep Going (interview w/ Maureen Seaton pt. 1) Sep 12, 2022

Show notes

The queens are joined by Empress Maureen Seaton to discuss pushing the envelope....
Buy Maureen's books from Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned indie bookstore.

Maureen Seaton earned an MFA from Vermont College in 1996. She is the author of the more than 25 poetry collections, some of them authored in collaboration with writers like Samuel Ace, Denise Duhamel, and Neil de la Flor. Seaton, Duhamel, and David Trinidad edited an anthology titled Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (2007). Seaton is author of the Lambda Literary Award–winning memoir Sex Talks to Girls (2008), in which she addresses motherhood, sobriety, and sexuality. Her most recent books are Undersea and Genetics, which she published in 2021.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk called “Your Elusive Creative Genius" confirms the story about Ruth Stone visualizing a poem as a sort of weather system. You can hear the whole talk here.

Read a poem by Maureen's teacher Mark Cox here.

A triolet is an eight-line poem, French in origin, with only two rhymes used throughout.

A rondelet's basic structure is:

Line 1: A—four syllables
Line 2: b—eight syllables
Line 3: A—repeat of line one
Line 4: a—eight syllables
Line 5: b—eight syllables
Line 6: b—eight syllables
Line 7: A—repeat of line one

The refrained lines should contain the same words, however substitution or different use of punctuation on the lines has been common.

In 1965, Jack Spicer gave a talk on poetry as "dictation." The poet Michael Peterson, whose online post I'm linking to below, writes: "By Spicer's theorem, the poet was not a kind of inspired genius, but rather a "medium" for a psychic, spiritual, poetic message. The poem, in turn, was like a radio which picked up the transmission. This lecture became the stuff of poetry legend, the recording passed from person to person until it was finally made available online almost fifty years later. This is an early recording which I have edited down from almost three hours to just under thirty minutes."

You can watch Levine read Lorca's poem "New York (Office and Denunciation)" at the New York Public Library here (~5 min).

Marilyn Hacker read and discussed her career at the National Book Festival in 2016, and you can watch it here (~40 min).

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