Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Sometimes poetry is a shield.Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Show Notes:Poems and poets mentioned in this episode include:Galway Kinnell, "Prayer"  A. Van Jordan, "Details Torn from MacNolia’s Diary." Read a consideration of the book on Poetry Daily here.Jaime Gil de Biedma, "Contra Jaime Gil de Biedma" and the translation here. Read this LitHub article considering the life and poetry of de Biedma by Spencer Reece.Gregory Orr writes about the accident in which his brother died here. Aaron posted a photo of "Poem for My Dead Mother" on his FaceBook here. The poem was first published in the Antioch Review in Vol. 31, No. 1, Spring, 1971Ethna McKiernan, "Washing My Mother's Hair." Read an obit for the poet in The Irish Times here . Kathy Fagan's "A Vocabulary of Icons" was first published in Southwest Review Vol. 83, No. 3, 1998Julia Kasdorf's "Eve Curse" is from her book Eve's Striptease. Visit her website.Jane Kenyon, "Let Evening Come"Toi Dericotte's poem "Clitoris" was first published in Kenyon Review, Spring 1994, Vol. XVI No. 2

The ladies break out the poetry crystal ball and predict the winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry.Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Show Notes:The 76th National Book Awards Ceremony will be streamed live on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 8:00 PM EST. You can watch the free livestream by registering on the National Book Foundation's website at nationalbook.org/awards. It will also be available on Facebook and YouTube. The poem we read of Calvocoressi's is "Praise House: The New Economy"; check out their website: https://www.gabriellecalvocoressi.com/ Read the poem by Ross Gay that Calvocoressi references: "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" We talked about Cathy Linh Che on our show "(Taylor's Version)"; read the title poem  "Becoming Ghost." Visit Che's website: https://www.cathylinhche.com/Tiana Clark maintains an online presence at https://www.tianaclark.com. Read "After the Reading" here. We interviewed Richard Siken in episode 12 of this season (season 3). "Flevato" is from I Do Know Some Things, though it was first published in Four Way Review. Visit Siken online at https://richard-siken.com. Read Patricia Smith's poem "70." And feel free to read more work on her website: https://www.wordwoman.ws/

The queens revisit and sing the praises of Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poem "Song." Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Show Notes:You can read the text of "Song" here. And read more about BPK here. James was wrong: "Song" was published in the Autumn 1993 issue of The Southern Review. Thanks to C.Dale Young for the correction!In ancient Greece, a tragoidia was a poem or play that was written and performed in formal language and that had an unhappy ending. The word combines tragos ("goat") and oide ("song").  A tragedy is literally a “goat song.”The journal West Branch published "This Long Winding Line: A Poetry Retrospective" about Kelly's book Song. The collection includes essays by Amit Majmudar, David Baker, C. Dale Young, Gabrielle Bates, and Shara Lessley, who also edited the portfolio. Watch Hiba Tahir on "Song" (including a prompt)Read this remembrance of BPK by two friends in Plume. And read this remembrance by Ryo Yamaguchi (who was BPK's student) in Michigan Quarterly Review. Gabrielle Bates talks about "Song" on Keep the Channel Open PodcastNickole Brown reads and discusses "Song" here.Read GC Waldrep's essay on another poem from the book Song ("All Wild Animals Were Once Called Deer") here. Emilia Phillips reads and discusses "Song" here. You can hear Brigit Pegeen Kelly read (unfortunately, not "Song") here, at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2004. 

The queens put the SIS in ekphrasis!Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Show Notes:The Greek word ekphrasis (ἔκφρασις) is derived from the Greek prefix ek- ("out") and the verb phrazein ("to speak," "to explain," or "to show"). The combination translates to "to speak out," "to speak clearly and completely," or "to show clearly." In the movie Showgirls, Kyle MacLachlan's character, Zack Carey, corrects Nomi Malone (played by Elizabeth Berkley) when she mispronounces "Versace" as "Ver-sayce." Watch the iconic scene here."Faithfully" is a song by American rock band Journey, released in 1983 as the second single from their album Frontiers. Go behind the music with some more info about the song's origin story.The receipts about Karl Lagerfeld's hateful (racist, fat phobic) ass are here.Some of the poems and poets we mention include:Jorie Graham, San SepolcroPaul Tran, Like Judith Slaying Holofernes -- and listen to Tran talk about their inspiration for this poem.Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo"Tommye Blount, "Karl Lagerfeld’s line of beauty"Amy Gerstler, "Dear Boy George"Anne Sexton, "Starry Night" David Trinidad's "Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera" (excerpt)Walta Borawski, "Watching Sting on Saturday Night Live." Check out this review of Borawski's Collected Poems.  

The queens talk with David Duchovny about poetry, Lacanian psychotherapy, love, the future perfect, and the lost past. Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:David Duchovny's new book, About Time, is just out from Akashic Books. David was interviewed about the book on PBS--watch it here. You can catch some of David's music here. For more about the Aymara of the Andean highlands, check out this NPR story.Randall Jarrell's poem "The Woman at the Washington Zoo" ends, "You see what I am: change me, change me!" Read it here.Check out the Fail Better Podcast interviews with Aimee Mann, Melissa Febos, and Jack HalberstamFor more about Lacan's short therapy sessions, click here.  For more about the future perfect tense, read here. Christopher Walken talks here about his resentment of punctuation.David talked with writer Chris Carter about ellipsis and his writing of the character Fox Mulder here. If you'd like to check out Matthew McConaughey reading his poems, here's a link for you.

The queens select some very poetic bachelors and decide where they'd read them on their date.Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Poets and poems mentioned include:"blessing the boats" by Lucille CliftonJoe Wenderoth's book, Letters to Wendy, "June 3, 1997"Li-Young Lee, "This Room and Everything In It"Frank O'Hara, "Having a Coke with You" Carolina Ebeid, "Reading Celan in a Subway Station"Raymond Antrobus, "Echo""Why Whales Are Back in New York City" by Rajiv MohabirArthur Sze, "At the Equinox"Jim Whiteside, "Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature"Ari Banias, "The Feeling"Steven Duong, "Ho Chi Minh City""Offerings Iphis Pledged as a Girl and Paid as a Boy" by Oliver Baez Bendorf James Ciano, “Coney Island Baby” Oak Morse, "A Portrait of Black Man Wrestling with His Secret Self (or, an inner cosplay ode to the singer Brandy" 

The queens descend upon Pittsburgh for a bittersweet (but dishy) tribute for Ed Ochester (1939-2023).Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:For more about the weekend events and about Ed Ochester's impact on American poetry, read here and here and here.The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press as part of the Pitt Poetry Series. Submissions are accepted March 1--April 30. For more about Southern Methodist University's Project Poetica, read here. Read more about the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature here. Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and (as he says on his website) "professional Black person." He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas—coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post and recently acquired by Univision and Gizmodo Media Group to be a vertical of The Root—and a columnist for GQ. Visit his website at https://www.damonjyoung.comAccording to CruisingGays.com, the Cathedral of Learning's 2nd and 8th floor bathrooms were popular cruising spots. The International Poetry Forum launched in 1966 with a reading that featured Archibald MacLeish. Since then, alumni of the series include nine Nobel Laureates, 14 Academy Award recipients, 28 U.S. Poets Laureate, 39 National Book Award winners, and 47 Pulitzer Prize winners.Joy Priest is the author of HORSEPOWER (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). Visit her website here.Check out Pittsburgh's City of Asylum here: https://cityofasylum.orgMonroeville is about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. Read Ed's poem titled "Monroeville"; several others can be found online at the Poetry Foundation here.Thanks to Nancy Krygowski and Jeffrey McDaniel and Terrance Hayes for putting together an incredible, moving weekend to a brilliant editor, mentor, and friend. We miss you, Ed.

The ladies pair poets together that prove complementary--or contrarian!Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Visit Gary Jackson's website.In this interview, Marie Howe talks a bit about Lucille Clifton and feminist poetry.You can listen here to Carl Phillips read and engage in conversation after with Lia Purpura at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in February 2021. Read this great, short essay by Carl Phillips on Linda Gregg.Read Irene McKinney's poem "The Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson"Visit Jehanne Dubrow online at https://jehannedubrow.comRebecca Lindenberg's website is https://www.rebeccalindenberg.com. Read "Catalogue of Ephemera."Visit Erika Meitner's website. And read her poem "Jesus is the Reason." You can watch Ange Minko read her villanelle "Escape Architecture"  or read it here. Essex Hemphill's new and selected is called Love Is a Dangerous Word. Finally, Charlie Sheen does indeed identify as bisexual, and apparently there is a lot of ick in the new Netflix documentary about him. 

The judgy Judies play Toss or Keep to help their friend Tommy downsize his poetry library.Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Some of the poems/poets/people mentioned in this episode include:Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man" which you can read here and listen to Creeley read here. And here's a roundtable discussion of the poem (~11 minutes, with a recording of Creeley reading it during a visit to Harvard).The poet Ai's book, Vice. Experience a video that includes her reading her poem "The Good Shepherd" here. Matthew Dickman, All-American PoemElizabeth (betsy) Cox, I Have Told You and Told You.   Read more about Cox's books with Penguin/Random House here. Loiuse Glück. "First Memory" is the last poem in Ararat. Watch this dramatic reading of the poem by Eisa Davis. Diane Gilliam Fisher, Kettle Bottom. Read more about Fisher here. Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake. Read the title poem here.Bob Hicok, Words for Empty, Words for Full. Read the poem "A Primer" mentioned in the show.James's poem "Portrait as My Mother as the Republic of Texas" appears in their first book, Now You're the Enemy (U of Arkansas, 2008). Read that poem and a short interview about it here. Watch this shady interview conducted with Paulina Porizkova about being fired by America's Next Top Model. The comic Beth Littlefield conducted very funny interviews forThe Daily Show in which her interviewer persona sent up Barbara Walters's interviews. In her interview of Dionne Warwick, she started one question this way:"In 1985, you participated in 'We Are the World,' which gathered together some of the top performers of our day, and Latoya Jackson." Watch Warwick fall out here, at the 2:30 mark.

The ladies get manifesto on that butt! (And mouth.) Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Read more about D.H. Lawrence here. Read William Carlos Williams's "Paterson" here and "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"  here.Jericho Brown writes about A.E. Housman in Mentor to Muse hereRead Dylan Thomas's poem "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"Here's a link to Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving But Drowning"For more about Keith Douglas, visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/keith-douglasAaron tosses off a quote from "Mayakovsky" by Frank O'Hara, which you can read here. Read poems by Louise Bennett here. Read Charles Olsen's "I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You"Here's Alan Dugan's "Internal Migration: On Being on Tour"Learn more about Judith Wright here.