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 Cavafy's complete literary corpus includes the 154 poems that constitute his poetic canon; his 75 unpublished or "hidden" poems, that were found completed in his archive or in the hands of friends, and weren't published until 1968; his 37 rejected poems, which he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."

Celebrating the art of the poetic punch & helping Form Breakers everywhere say "f*ck you" to their nemesissies.

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

Listen to Taylor Swift sing a mash-up of "thanK you aIMee" (about Kim Kardashian) and "Mean" on the Eras tour in London here.

Read John Dryden's "MacFlecknoe"

Visit Lisa Glatt online.

Read "Wanda in Worryland" by Wanda Coleman (scroll down). Aaron reads her poem "What it Means to Be Dark." Read this consideration of Coleman's work by Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker.

You can read Catallus's fuck you poem (#33 translated by AZ Foreman) here. The link here has a recording of the poem recited in Latin too.

Adrienne Rich's poem "Song" is the 9th poem in Diving Into the Wreck. The first poem is "Trying to Talk With a Man." And you can read "The Phenomenology of Anger" here. The receipt about Rich driving Bishop is here.

Read Jayne Cortez's "There it Is." There It Is is also the title of the album released in 1982 by Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, which contains Cortez's poem as the lead track. Listen to the poem set to music here. And you can watch Cortez perform here.

Are you a friend of Dorothy? This episode pays tribute to The Golden Girls, but in the most Breaking Form way possible!

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

Christian Wiman's book Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. It's part memoir and part a collection of his poems and poems by others related to the book's themes. Hear Wiman interviewed on Fresh Air

Read Brenda Shaughnessy's "Panopticon" first published in Ecotone.

Read Aaron Smith's poem "Blue Exits" (about self-harming and self-exiting)

A gay couple had an epic, viral meltdown in an airport. If you haven't seen the original TikTok go "Remember Them: Shelby and Dolly"

We reference Dana Levin's fourth book, Banana Palace. Read the title poem.

Read Erin Belieu's poem "Erections"

On your knees with the queens in the poetry darkroom, poetic pleasures await! Then we wipe off our kneecaps before hitting the Pride Parade.

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.

NOTES

Tess Gallagher's "Stopping Place" is from her book Willingly.

Donna Stonecipher's "Inlay 18 (Sei Shõnagun)" is from her book The Cosmopolitan. Read a bit about the book here.

Sei Shōnagon's actual given name is not known. It was the custom among aristocrats in those days to call a court lady by a nickname taken from a court office belonging to her father or husband. Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book.

The Dick Dock in Provincetown is so popular it has its own Facebook page. Or check out this Youtube video called "Provincetown's Dick Dock: Making Gay Sex Magic!"

If you want to know more about the history of the Meat Rack on Fire Island, here's a good starting place.

Read Ocean Vuong's poem "Theology"

Marilyn Nelson's "For Mary, Fourth Month" is available in her The Fields of Praise: New and Selected.

Jim Powell did indeed win a MacArthur in 1993. Read more poems by Powell here.

Read Frank Stanford's "Blue Yodel of the Desperado"

Read more about Osip Mandelstam

Kevin Prufer's book of poems The Fears won the Rilke Prize. Read the judges' citation here.

Visit Michelle Tea's website here. Or read an excerpt from her poem "I Used to Be Straight" here (scroll down).

Read Franny Choi's "Unlove Poem"

Read "Prayer/Oracion" by Francisco X. Alarcón, trans. Francisco Aragón

Read "American Wedding" by Essex Hemphill

Here's June Jordan's fiery "Poem About My Rights"

You can read torrin a. greathouse's "Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs" here.

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.

NOTES

Watch 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.