Aaron and James revisit an iconic poem about queer duty and erasure by Essex Hemphill.

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.

SHOW NOTES

Read Hemphill's biographical sketch on the Poetry Foundation.

We reference Hemphill's canonical poem, which you can read: "American Wedding" (listen to Justin Smith read the poem here).

Hemphill's Ceremonies was published by Cleis Press in 1992.

Hit the 1:04 mark on this clip to hear Hemphill read a poem as part of Tongues Untied.

Hemphill took part in a panel during the Black Nations/Queer Nations Conference in the early 90s alongside Samuel R. Delaney and Coco Fusco. His talk is about HIV, Blackness, and queerness.

Spill all the tea but spill it slant with the Breaking Form queens in this episode dedicated to the art of secrets.

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.

SHOW NOTES

Madonna's "Secret" was the lead single off of her sixth album, Bedtime Stories. Watch the video here.

Read Sharon Olds's "Killing My Sister's Fish"

Len Roberts's "The Problem" appeared in APR March/April 2001 and can also be found in The Silent Singer.

Julia Kasdorf's "Eve's Curse" appears in her book Eve's Striptease. You can watch her give a reading (from As Is) here.

Read Emily Dickinson's 260. And check out her handwritten copy here. Dickinson published TEN poems and a letter in her lifetime.

Aaron reads the July 17, 1996 entry from Letters to Wendy's and you can read the text of that here.

Read CP Cavafy's "The Afternoon Sun" (trans. Edmund Keeley). Cavafy's complete literary corpus includes the 154 poems that constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or "hidden" poems, that were found completed in his archive or in the hands of friends, and weren't published until 1968; his 37 rejected poems, which he published but later renounced; his 30 incomplete poems that were found unfinished in his archive; as well as numerous other prose poems, essays, and letters.[16] According to the poet's instructions, his poems are classified into three categories: historical, philosophical, and hedonistic or sensual.[10]

Here's W.H. Auden's "If I Could Tell You" & you can hear him read it.

Read Laura Kasischke's "Bike Ride with Older Boys" (from her book Dance and Disappear).

Check out Cathy Linh Che's "The German word for dream is trauma."

Knock knock, darlings! Join the queens as we talk about funny poems.

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.

SHOW NOTES

Watch Stacey Waite give a full reading here (at 38:00); here's Stacey reading one poem: "The Kind of Man I Am at the DMV."

Watch Gary Jackson's poem "Tryouts" in Motionpoems (Button Poetry) here.

Read Tim Dlugos's "David Cassidy, I Want to Fuck You"; listen to Terence Winch read "Incredible Risks" (the title of one of Dlugos's books) here.

Read "Note Passed to Superman" as well as some other of Lucille Clifton's "Clark Kent Poems" here.

Here's an interview in Adroit Journal with Denise Duhamel, in which she discusses the craft of chattiness and comedy in her poetry.

Visit Nick Lantz's website.

You can read Aaron Smith's "Jennifer Lawrence" here (scroll down).

Watch Anita Bryant get some queer comeuppance here. James's poem about this is: "On Dark Days, I Imagine My Parents' Wedding Video." Their poem, "A Fact Which Occurred in America" can be read here.

Read Matthew Olzmann's "Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice" (from Constellation Route).

Go read A.R. Ammons's poem "Their Sex Life" here.

Read Ed Ochester's "Monroeville, PA."