Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens talk literary confidantes; then we discuss the pros and pitfalls of poetic friendships.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.NOTES:Read a bit more about Spencer Williams's Tranz, including from the poem "Laramie" in the book, here. Watch this reading celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility, featuring some  poets from our episode, including Amir Rabiyah and Stephanie Burt. Rabiyah's first    book, Prayers for My 17th Chromosome, is available through Sibling Rivalry Press.Here is "Queer Facts About Vegetables" by Oliver Baez Bendorf. Read Jameson Fitzpatrick's poem "How to Feel Good" (and scroll for an essay by the poet).Read Cameron Awkward-Rich "Lucille's Roaches" and visit the poet's website at https://www.cawkwardrich.com/Read Joshua Jennifer Espinoza's sonnet from the episode.Watch Espinoza read from her first book, I Don't Want to Be Understood, with guest D.A. Powell.Read Taylor Johnson's "Trans is Against Nostalgia" and order Inheritance (Alice James).Read Stephanie Burt's "Inside Out Stephanie" and check out the Breaking Form interview with Stephanie about the anthology she edited, Super Gay Poems.Subhaga Crystal Bacon's "Crossings" appears in Transitory (Boa Books; purchase it here). Check out Bacon's website. Read torrin a. greathouse's "There’s No Trace of the Word “Transgender” in Adrienne Rich’s Biography"Anthologies:Troubling the LineWe Want it AllSubject to Change

The queens talk literary confidantes; then we discuss the pros and pitfalls of poetic friendships.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.NOTES:Check out Toni Morrison's  1987 eulogy for James Baldwin in the New York Times.We read from Fran Lebowitz's remembrance of her friend Toni Morrison, printed in the Paris Review.If you haven't already, read Brenda Hillman's "Male Nipples" Read "The Curious Friendship of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell" from The Atlantic.Check out this exploration of the dynamics in literary friendships published in Esquire. 

The Breaking Form broads recount their poetic travels abroad in this Season 3 opener.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.NOTES:The David Hockney retrospective in Paris is on view until August 31. For more about his painting "Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy," click here.For more about Hockney and the Muse, read "David Hockney's Literary Influences" For a map that names the regions comprising Italy, go here. Jorie Graham's poem "San Sepolcro" first appeared in Erosion, and it concerns Piero della Francesca's iconic fresco "Madonna del Porto," on view at the Musei Civici Madonna del Parto, in the tiny Umbrian village of Monterchi, Italy. (In fact, the only work on view at the museum is the Madonna, which is worth the trip).For more about Civitella Ranieri, visit https://civitella.org, and follow them on Instagram @civitellaranieri or on Facebook. Civitella livestreams presentations by these world-class artists on IG Live.

The queens boil down the essence of some favorite poems and poets in this game that decides what poetry is *really* about.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.NOTES:Read the NY Times review of Michael Schmidt's The Lives of the PoetsListen to James Merrill read his poem "For Proust" and while we're on the subject, here's a madeleine recipe. For an examination of Bishop's sensible sensibility, go here. Watch Anne Carson read from Nox (~24 min).Here is a Galway Kinnell tribute reading from May 2015 which included Marie Howe and Sharon Olds (among others).Watch Dorianne Laux read "Trying to Raise the Dead" published in her book SmokeIn a New Yorker profile interview, Natasha Trethewey discusses Native Guard, and says that we have to remember "the nearly two hundred thousand African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War, who fought for their own freedom, who fought to preserve the Union rather than destroy the Union, to whom there are very few monuments erected. Just think how different the landscape of the South would be, and how differently we would learn about our Southern history, our shared American history, if we had monuments to those soldiers who won the war—who didn’t lose the war but won the war to save the Union. Those are the monuments we need to have." Read the whole conversation and profile here.Here's a BBC4 adaptation of Browning's The Ring and the Book (~1 hour)Go here for more about George Meredith's sonnet sequence Modern Love.If you were looking for a free audio full-text version of Tennyson's In Memoriam read by Elizabeth Klatt, today's your lucky day. (~2.5 hours).

If you're looking to submit, the queens have some advice for you!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.NOTES:Check out On the Seawall: a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by poet Ron Slate.Here's some great advice about submitting & publishing poetry.Here's another good article about submitting to literary magazines.And here's yet some more advice, this time by published writers and editors like Krista Marie Darling (Tupelo Press), Sandra Beasley (Blair Publishing), and others.

The ladies ask AI to write poems about Brad Pitt's butt. It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?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.NOTES:Aaron's "Brad Pitt" appeared in his first book, Blue on Blue Ground. Read the poem here. Here's the official video for the Miley Cyrus song "End of the World" and here's a remix that is rocking our worlds, too. I couldn't find Brad Pitt reciting poetry, but he does read from A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James in this clip.For more about Matsuo Bashō go here.Read this excellent and moving piece about AI and grief by Jason Fagone: "The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I." details a grieving man's use of the AI called Project December in order to cope with the loss of his fiancé.