Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

We're snatching wigs in this one! The queens get real about bad poetry. If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.NOTESWatch the official lyric video for "But Daddy I Love Him" and read this article about what the pub The Black Dog (the titular pub from the Taylor Swift Song) s like.Read Mona van Dun's minimalist sonnet "Closure" here.If you hate your eyeballs and poetry, go read Helen Steiner Rice's "It Takes the Bitter and the Sweet" and her foundation's website. The article Aaron talks about is Vice's "Bad Poetry is Everywhere," which quotes Yasmin Belkhyr. It includes links to the receipts about the poet we note has been alleged to have plagiarized--and here's the Daily Beast article about that poet too.Javier O. Huerta in an essay for the Poetry Foundation named a few good bad poems, including Elizabeth Bishop's "Casabianca"Here is the first sonnet from Sonnets From the Portuguese.Read Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" Marie Howe's "What the Living Do" is the title poem from her 2nd collection. You can watch her read the poem here.

A leading ladies game leads to a tombstone-poetry pop quiz before Monica Farrell reads a poem by Michael Dumanis. Happy Pride Month!Watch Anne Sexton respond to a vile review (published in The Southern Review) of Live or Die.  Read "Menstruation at Forty" from Live or Die.  Read "Rapunzel" from Sexton's Transformations.On Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, appearing with Natalie Portman to promote May December, Julianne Moore names her performance in Far From Heaven as her "personal best performance." On another episode, Moore talks about being fired from CanYou Every Forgive Me?  by Nicole Holofcener. Here's the receipts for why.It's not just Aaron who doesn't think of Moonstruck as romantic comedy.Read "The Wicked Candor of Wanda Coleman." Read this terrific appreciation of Kathy Acker in The LA Review of Books.Here's the New Yorker profile in which Judith Butler tells the story of her job interview at Williams in the late 1980s. James Wright's first book The Green Wall won the Yale Younger  in 1957 (chosen by Auden) and is full of formal verse. Compare "On the Skeleton of a Hound" (from The Green Wall) with "A Blessing" (from his 3rd book, The Branch Will Not Break).Kim Addonizio's poem "What Women Want" is the poem James was thinking about. It was first published in Tell Me.  You can buy Diannely Antigua's new book Good Monster, just out from Copper Canyon Press.The epitaph on Auden's grave is from his poem "In Memory of WB Yeats," which you can listen to Auden reading here.Read Dorothy Parker's "Interview."Watch this intro to the project at Canterbury Christchurch University's celebrating Aphra Behn. Read her poem "Love Armed."The epitaph on Kenyon's and Hall's tombstone is from her poem "Afternoon at MacDowell"At the end of the episode, Monica Ferrell reads Michael Dumanis's poem "East Liverpool, Ohio" from his new book Creature. Read a conversation with Michael in Adroit here.

The queens revisit some early, inspiring books of poetry that still slap! Come nerd out with us. If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Read Linda Gregg's "Part of Me Wanting Everything to Live"Read an interview with Wayne Koestenbaum, "Dirty Mind: An Interview with WK" which appeared in LA Review of Books Read "Boy at the Patterson Falls" from Toi Derricotte's Captivity.Listen to Susan Mitchell read "A Rainbow" -- the fun starts around 11:08. It includes her singing in German….Read Cathy Song's "Ikebana" from Picture Bride, which won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets and was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.Listen to Cornelius Eady read some poems from Brutal Imagination (including "How I Got Born") and talk about Susan Smith here (forward to 23:50 mark). You can read the text of "How I Got Born" here (scroll down and click title to expand the whole poem). Eady turned the poems into a play of the same name; you can listen to Eady in conversation with Joe Morton about that process here (~47 min).

Break out the croquet for a game of poets named Heather before the queens talk poetry inspired by the movie Heathers. No, Heather, it's Heather's turn!Please support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. When she released her 2nd book of poems, TheTrees The Trees, Heather Christle set up a phone number which people could call to have her read a poem to them. The number was (413) 570-3077. You can read more about that endeavor here and here.You can read Heather McHugh's poem "I Knew I’d Sing," listen to McHugh read it, or watch Mary Karr discuss it. Read McHugh's ars poetica "What He Thought" or click here to listen to her read it (at the 30:45 mark).Find out more about the singer Conan Gray.Watch here the clip of the father eulogizing his son at the funeral for Jake and Ram.Check out Dustin Brookshire's poem "If Dolly Parton Had Been My Mother" And then check out the magazine Dustin edits, Limp Wrist.Read GC Waldrep's poem "What Is a Soprano"Read Frank Bidart's "Herbert White"Check out a lunchtime poll in Heathers.Watch the official video for P!nk's song "Trustfall"

The queens blur the boundaries between Dylan Thomas James, then become shady ladies about Broetry.If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. Read Dylan Thomas's incredible villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" or listen to Thomas read it here. We reference a few readings of this poem by actors:  Here's Anthony Hopkins getting choked up reading it.  And here's Michael Sheen's rendition.Listen to Thomas read "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London." You can read the text of the poem here.Read Dylan Thomas's "The Girl's Story"Watch a short (30 min) Dylan Thomas documentary here.Read Dylan Thomas's poems "Once Below a Time" and "Where Once the Waters of Your Face"Read Thomas James's poem "Dragging the Lake" and his poem "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh"Read another pair of Thomas James poems: "Reasons" and "Waking Up"Check out this FABULOUS Lucie Brock-Broido's essay on Thomas James: "The Rebirth of a Suicidal Genius"

The art of losing isn't hard to master in this episode devoted to the loves and losses of Elizabeth Bishop's life. If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Read Bishop's villanelle (the only one she ever published!)  "One Art." Read about her drafting process (at least 16 versions) here. You can listen to Bishop read a few of her poems, including "In the Waiting Room" here--recorded at the 92nd Street Y in October 1977. And here's a much younger Bishop reading "The Fish."Bishop's Paris Review interview is absolute gold. For more on Lota and Samambaia, the house she built north of Rio, read this Paris Review article on two recent movies made about Bishop and Lota. Other receipts for what we say in the show are found in this New York Times article, "The Love of Her Life"For more about the acrimonious "war of the legal wills" between Bishop and Macedo Soares, I recommend David Hoak's article "Proofs of Love: The Last Letters of Lota de Macedo Soares," published in PN Review Volume 42 Number 2 (Nov-Dec 2015). The link contains a paywall.See more photographs of Samambaia, the glass butterfly-shaped house Lota built in Petrópolis.Here are the receipts about Judy Flynn.Receipts for the Louise Crane-Billie Holiday tryst are here and here. Read "The Loneliness of Elizabeth Bishop" in The Nation. Crusoe in England" was a coded coping with grief over Soares' death. when the repatriated Robinson Crusoe recalls the loss of “Friday, my dear Friday,” who “died of measles / seventeen years ago come March.” Had Soares lived to one more March birthday, the couple would have spent seventeen years together. You can hear Bishop read (and follow along the text of) "Crusoe in England" here. 

Jericho Brown returns to finish the conversation about Reginald Shepherd, (in)formalism, and inspiration. If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.     Jericho's THE SELECTED SHEPHERD is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. We talk about Shepherd's "The Gods at 3am" on another episode of Breaking Form in "Mona in the Corner."Read more about Papa Legba, a figure in voodoo traditions in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Louisiana.Read Jericho's poem "Again" from his first book, Please.Jericho mentions his poem "Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry" which appeared in The New York Times early on in the pandemic.Daniel Black's book title is titled Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America. Read the NPR review by Gabino Iglesias here, and follow him on Instagram @drdanielblackSome fabulous essays on Shepherd or reviews of his books can be found in the resources listed below:John Gallagher on ShepherdJoan Houlihan, In Memoriam of Reginald ShepherdBrian Henry on WrongAs always, check out Shepherd's own blog.  

If you bring along to Breaking Form Book Club an extra bottle of chardonnay,  we'll read some poems from books you may have missed....If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.Read more about Zando and Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP Lit: https://zandoprojects.com/imprints/sjp-lit/ Read the entirety of Marilyn Chin's poem "How I Got that Name" Read the title poem of Denis Johnson's collection The Incognito Lounge. You can read more about the poet 'Annah Sobelman here, including a few poems.Randall Jarrell's poem "Losses" appeared in August 1944 issue of Poetry Magazine. It is the title poem of his 1948 book (Harcourt). You can read Jarrell's NY Times obit here.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.You can purchase The Selected Shepherd edited by Jericho Brown directly from the press at: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948216/Check out Jericho Brown's website. Read the title poem from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Tradition here. Reginald Shepherd's blog can be found online here. The specific posts on the AWP Panel "Gay Male Poetry: Post Identity Politics?" Can be found here:    Part 1    Part 2Shepherd also wrote a post for Harriet, the blog for the Poetry Foundation, as he was getting ready to deliver the panel. You can read that post here.Robert Philen's remarks about Reginald Shepherd's memoir were delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society in 2013. You can read them here.In the show, Jericho references Frank O'Hara being gay/putting phallic things around his mouth. You can read O'Hara's poem "Homosexuality" here.Richard Hugo's book of essays The Triggering Town was published in 1979 and reissued in 2010. You can read an essay from the book about "the triggering subject" here.Read Reginald Shepherd's poem "Syntax."Watch Shepherd read his poems at Berry College here. (~1 hour.) Poems include "Difficult Music," "White Sargasso Sea," "Slaves," "The Friend," "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," "Unused," "Tantalus in May," "Maritime," and "The Gods at 3am" (at the 30:55 min mark). 

The queens love to love you--but it didn't always start out like that. Stick around for our game: "Pulitzer Prize Winning Titles from an Alternate Universe."Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.If you have library access, Ena Jung's 2015 article "The Breath of Emily Dickinson's Dashes" is worth the time.Watch Bill Murray read two of the more obscure Wallace Stevens poems here. Watch Jonathan Pryce read Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"Watch James Wright read some of his iconic poems, including "A Blessing" (at 33:15--he calls the poem "a description") here.John Ashbery's Flow Chart is a book-length poem comprising 4,794 lines, divided into six numbered chapters, each of which is further divided into sections or verse-paragraphs, varying in number from seven to 42. The sections vary in length from one or two lines, to seven pages. It includes at least one double-sestina (and one of them references oral sex between men).Hear Linda Gregg read and be interviewed in 1986 (~25 mins).Here's a quick book-trailer of C. Dale Young's The Halo, including a reading of one of the poems by Young.Listen to a few minutes of Archibald Macleish's Conquistador here.We can recommend Peter Maber's 2008 article about John Berryman's Dream Songs, "'So-called black': Reassessing John Berryman’s Blackface Minstrelsy" as a good starting place to think about the racism in that book.Jazz Age poet, translator, and Poetry editor George Dillon was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1906.At 24, Audrey Wurdemann is the youngest person to win the poetry Pulitzer (for Bright Ambush). Read a few poems here.Read Robert P. Tristram Coffin's poem "Messages"Here's Mark Strand reading "Sleeping With One Eye Open"We reference  Stevie Nicks (a Gemini) singing her iconic song "Landslide"Winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin controversially  included letters from Elizabeth Hardwick (Lowell's former wife). The letters were sent to him after he left her for the English socialite and writer Caroline Blackwood. He was warned by many, among them Elizabeth Bishop, that “art just isn’t worth that much.”