Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Notes:

The documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is a 91-minute biographical film directed by Sasha Waters that explores the life, career, and private world of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. You can watch it on YouTube for free here.

Read Mary Oliver's essay "Bird" here and her poem "Summer Day" here.

Janna Levin's book How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space is a popular 2023 book that mixes memoir and visionary science. Levin is a leading astrophysicist. Find her online at https://jannalevin.com

Mark Doty's essay, "Can Poetry Console a Grieving Public?" which also features Szymborska's "Photograph from September 11th."

Patricia Hampl's most recent books are the nonfiction book The Art of the Wasted Day (2019) and It's Come to This, which pairs her nonfiction text with illustrations. The book itself is 36 pages, bound with quarter yellow leather over illustrated paper-covered boards, and enclosed in a cloth clamshell box with a paper spine label. Only 75 copies were printed; the copy I found online retails for $1500.

Watch a short interview and reading by Tyree Daye here.

Read more about Patrick Radden Keefe's book London Falling 

You can read the beginning of Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow in the New Yorker here. 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Notes:

Rita Dove is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Visit her online here. If you hadn't heard about the controversy surrounding the edition, here's a recap. 

Read Seamus Heaney's "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Read Donald Justice's poem "Psalm and Lament" 

We read William Stafford's poem "Traveling Through the Dark" in our Touchstone Poems episode. 

Ellen Bryant Voigt is from Danville, Virginia

 Read more about Mary Gabriel's 2018 book Ninth Street Women. And read more about Susan Glaspell's collected stories here, or read her powerful one-act play "Trifles." During the Great Depression, Glaspell worked in Chicago for the Works Progress Administration, where she was Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.

Visit Bruce Snider online.

If one wanted to track state arts funding, one could use this explorer tool at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Notes:

Visit Kathy Fagan's website: https://www.kathyfagan.com/

Read a review of The Unbecoming by Jane Zwart in Plume or this one in Library Journal

Read Kathy's poem "Planned Community" in The Adroit Journal—where you can also hear her read it.

Read "The Elevens"

Read "Bad Hobby," the title poem of Kathy's 2022  book Bad Hobby, which won the William Carlos Williams Award in 2023.

If you're in the Columbus, OH area on Sept 24, get thee to Kathy Fagan's book launch (with Maggie Smith) 

Louise Glück published Winter Recipes from the Collective in 2021. Read the title poem here. Her last published book was a prose work, the novella-length Marigold and Rose. 

Atsuro Riley is the author of the poetry collections Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010). He was brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry, and lives now in San Francisco. Visit his website here: https://atsuroriley.org

Read T.S. Eliot's "The Four Quartets"

Visit Brenda Hillman on the web: https://www.brendahillman.net/index.html

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Notes:

You can watch Aaron's video essay on Thom Browne here. 

Read Frank Bidarts poems "The Yoke" and "Herbert White"

Visit Tom Ford's Instagram account 

The Dickinson poem we reference is "I heard a Fly buzz —when I died —" (591)

If you haven't heard the "Tongue in Butt" clip, hit the 15 minute mark of our episode "Bad Animals"

Hervé Guibert's" Red Tape" appears in his book Ghost Image. Here's a consideration of the writer, filmmaker, and critic: "When a Virus Becomes a Muse" by Julian Lucas in the New Yorker. 

Check out Iris van Herpen here: https://www.irisvanherpen.com or on Instagram here. Read "(Im)mortal Fashion: Iris van Herpen's 'Skeleton' Dress" and you can see her famous "Bubble Dress" here.

Read Sara Nicholson's poem "What the Lyric Is"

Here is Joshua Edwards's small essay on Nicholson's work

Pharrell published Places and Spaces I've Been (2012), which explores his creative intersections in music, streetwear, and contemporary art, featuring interviews and contributions from figures like Jay-Z and Takashi Murakami. In 2018, he published  A Fish Doesn't Know It's Wet: Also published by Rizzoli, this lavishly-illustrated volume highlights his expanding portfolio in design, high-fashion collaborations (Chanel, Moncler), and his Billionaire Boys Club/Ice Cream clothing lines .In 2023, he released Carbon, Pressure & Time: A Book of Jewels.

The Louis Vuitton building on the Champs-Élysées in Paris is undergoing renovation—masked by a giant trunk façade. The massive silver-monogrammed suitcase structure remains a prominent landmark and photo spot on the avenue while the project moves toward completion.

Learn more about Schiaparelli

Read Joshua Bennett's poem "On Flesh" from his book The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016). Watch Bennett perform his poem "Transatlantic Love Manifesto"

You can see a great photograph of Ariana Grande's Oscar dress, designed by Schiaparelli's Daniel Roseberry, here. 

Learn more about Betsey Johnson

Read Monica Ferrell's "Safranbolu" here. 

Dior's Jonathan Anderson homage to Joe Brainard for Loewe AW 2021-22. Read a consideration of Anderson's refashioning of art history for his debut Dior show here.

 Read Terrance Hayes's "New York Poem"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Marie Howe was born in Rochester, New York in October 1950 (she's a Libra!). She earned an MFA from Columbia University before publishing The Good Thief (1988, chosen by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series); What the Living Do (Norton, 1997), a book that centers other brother John's death from AIDS-related illness; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008); Magdalene (2017); and New and Selected Poems (2024), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Howe has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She was the Poet Laureate of New York State from 2012 to 2014. She is the poet in residence at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. 

Visit Marie Howe's website: http://www.mariehowe.com/

Listen to her talk on Poetry Unbound here and watch her comprehensive interview with Krista Tippett here (90 minutes).

You can see her give a reading in 2020 here (27 min); or read her poem "The Gate" from What the Living Do here (1.5 min); or read from her book Magdalene here (~23 min).

Read this 1997 interview with Howe conducted by Victoria Redel.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Toi Derricotte was born in Hamtramck, Michigan, on April 12, 1941. She earned her BA in special education from Wayne State University and her MA in English literature from New York University. Derricotte’s books of poetry include I: New & Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); and Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997). She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W. W. Norton, 1997), which won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction.

Together with Cornelius Eady, Derricotte cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation in 1996, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.

For more about Derricotte (and her poems) go here and here. 

Watch Toi Derricotte give a reading here (2015; ~30 min)

Watch Toi Derricotte talk about reading and writing long poems here. 

Read excerpts in Kenyon Review from Derricotte's Black Notebooks here.

Read this Bettina Judd essay on Derricotte (from Poetry Northwest).

Poems we read include:

"Not Forgotten"

"In Knowledge of Young Boys"

"Touching/Not Touching: My Mother"

"The Undertaker's Daughter"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Rigoberto González was born in Bakersfield, California and raised in Michoacán, Mexico. He earned a BA from the University of California, Riverside and graduate degrees from University of California, Davis and Arizona State University. He is the author of To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems Selected and New (2023), The Book of Ruin (2019), Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award, and Black Blossoms (2011), all published by Four Way Books. His other poetry collections include Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (Tupelo Press, 2006) and So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks (University of Illinois Press, 1999), a National Poetry Series selection. 

González has also written multiple books in other genres including the novel Crossing Vines (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), the memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), the critical essay collection Pivotal Voices, Era of Transition: Toward a 21st Century Poetics (University of Michigan Press, 2017), and the book of stories Men without Bliss (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).

Read more about González (and more poems by him) here. 

Read this essay on González by Darrel Alejandro Holness here. 

Read this essay penned by González on writing memoir.

Watch this short, fabulous interview with Rigoberto González here (~20 min). And watch González read his poem "A Note on Resentment" (~2 min).

Poems we read include:

"What Smells Dead"

"Casa"

"Thinking Stones"

"Carnivore"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

The poet Ai was noted for her uncompromising poetic vision and dramatic monologues which give voice to marginalized, poor, and abused speakers. She  legally changed her name to Ai which means “love” in Japanese. Ai self-identified as Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche. Her collections include: Cruelty (1973), Killing Floor (1978), Sin (1986), Fate (1991), Greed (1993), Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999) which was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry, and Dread (2003).

Read more about her (as well as poems by her) here. 

Read her obituary in the New York Times here, and this recollection essay by Tamiko Beyer in Kenyon Review here.

Watch Ai read from her first book here (~6 min; recording made in November 1974).

We discussed Ai in our episode "We Can Shift the Canon"

Poems we read by Ai include:

"The Hitchhiker" - hear Ai read it here. 

"Twenty-Year Marriage"

"James Dean"

"True Love" 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Lucie Brock-Broido was born in Pittsburgh. Her collections include: A Hunger (1988), The Master Letters (1995), Trouble in Mind (2004), and Stay, Illusion (2013), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award. Read more about her, and more poems, here. 

Read this interview with Elizabeth Metzger on Brock-Broido.

Read Askold Melnyczuk's eulogy for LBB here. 

And read Joelle Biele's review of Stay, Illusion in Harvard Review here.

Read LBB"s poem "After the Grand Perhaps"

Read about the evolution of the Lady Godiva story here. 

Poems we read include:

"Jessica, from the Well" (Jstor / Virginia Quarterly Review subscription required) -- this version is slightly different than the published version included in A Hunger.

"Domestic Mysticism"

"After Raphael"

"Dove, Interrupted"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

 Tim Dlugos was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. From 1968 to 1970, he was a Christian Brother at LaSalle College in Philadelphia. He left LaSalle and moved to Washington, DC, but later lived in New York City where he was a contributing editor to Christopher Street magazine and on the Poetry Project staff.

Dlugos’s books of poetry include High There (1973), Je Suis Ein Americano (1979), Incredible Risks (1980), Entre Nous (1981), A Fast Life (1982), Strong Place (1992), Powerless: Selected Poems 1973–1990 (1995), and the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. 

Marked by witty observation, narratives that recount life’s daily minutia, and heavily enjambed lines, Dlugos’s poetry shares its immediate, offhand style with the work of Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler. Dlugos’s work is also noteworthy for its firsthand depiction of the AIDS pandemic.

Read this essay about Dlugos and Danez Smith.

Poems we read include:

"G9"

"An Undelivered Class Presentation on the Subject of Gay Consciousness"

"Incredible Risks" (scroll down)

"Healing the World from Battery Park," which you can read in the 1993 Best American Poetry, available here on the Internet Archive.

Watch Ry Dunn read "G-9" here (~15 min). 

And watch Tim Dlugos read a swath of poems here (~30 min).

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Scholar, novelist, and poet Melvin Dixon was born in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA and a PhD from Brown University. His poetry collections include: Change of Territory (1983) and Love’s Instruments (1995, published posthumously. He's the author of two novels, Trouble the Water (1989) and Vanishing Rooms (1991). 

Read Dixon's most-anthologized poem "Heartbeats" Watch Danez Smith read the poem here. 

CM Burroughs is joined by Adrian Metejka on this panel celebrating Melvin Dixon's work. Watch here (~30 min). CM Burroughs reads her essay published in Poetry Magazine, the text of which is here: "Poetic Kin: Meeting Melvin Dixon"

Read "Looking Back: The AIDS Epidemic" for a bit more about the AIDS pandemic.

Poems we read include:

"Turning 40 in the Nineties"

"Change of Territory" 

"The 80s Miracle Diet"

"One by One"

"I'll Be Somewhere Listening for My Name"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Larry Patrick Levis (September 30, 1946 – May 8, 1996) was an American poet and teacher who published five books of poetry during his lifetime. Two more volumes of previously unpublished poems appeared posthumously. A collected volume called Swirl & Vortex (Graywolf, 2026, edited by David St. John) makes all of Levis’s poetry available in one volume, including the five books published in Levis’s lifetime, a brilliant reconfiguration of Levis’s posthumous books, and unpublished late poems, with an afterword by St. John. 

Watch this 1984 reading Levis gave with Phil Levine (~67 min; Levis reads first).

Watch the book launch for Swirl & Vortex here (~2 hours).

Watch Analicia Sotelo read Levis's "My Story in a Late Style of Fire" (with a brief commentary; ~6 min).

Read "Winter Stars" here.

Poems Read include:

"The Smell of the Sea"

"Unfinished Poem" 

"The Blue Hat Band"

"My Story in a Late Style of Fire"

Read how to seduce a Libra here. 

If you've never seen Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, here's the trailer. 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Tommye Blount was born and raised in Detroit. He holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020), a finalist for the National Book Award, and the chapbook What Are We Not For (Bull City Press, 2016). Blount is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 2023, he received a Whiting Award in Poetry. A Cave Canem Fellow, Blount lives in Novi, Michigan.

Visit Tommye's website: https://www.tommyeblount.com/home

Buy the book Fantasia for the Man in Blue from Four Way Books.

Poems we mention include:

"Fantasia for the Man in Blue" (one of four title poems in the book). Watch Tommye read this poem here. 

"Leroy Auditions for the Fame School"

"Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, Circa 1925" in Massachusetts Review 

"Palmer Park"

"Karl Lagerfeld's Line of Beauty"

Read two poems by Tommye in Four Way Review here.

See Tommye read his poem "Grand Dragon" at the Whiting Awards here (~1 min)

Watch Leroy Johnson's audition in Fame here!

Read this interview with Tommye in Adroit Journal

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Lynda Hull was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1954. Her collections include Ghost Money (1986), recipient of the Juniper Prize; Star Ledger (1991), which won the 1991 Carl Sandburg and 1990 Edwin Ford Piper awards; and The Only World: Poems, published posthumously in 1995 and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. In 2006, Graywolf Press published her Collected Poems, edited by her husband, David Wojahn. 

We read these Lynda Hull poems:

"Night Waitress"

"Adagio" from Star Ledger (the poem is dedicated to Mark Doty)

"Chiffon" 

"Midnight Reports" (which was first published in Agni, alongside "Black Mare" and "Visiting Hour") also from Star Ledger.

And check out this video of Erika Meitner reading Hull's poem "At Thirty" and Gary Jackson reading "Magical Thinking"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Poets and poems we mention in this episode include:

Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry"

Rob Schlegel, "Poetry" 

Sandra Lim, "Something Something Something Grand"

Margaret Walker, "Lineage"

Sylvia Plath, "The Applicant"

Diane Wakoski, "The Father of My Country"

Carolyn Forche, "Selective Service"

Mark Bibbins, "The Anxiety of Coincidence"

Corey Marks, "Broken Music"

Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" 

Louise Glück, "Anniversary"

e.e. cummings, "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"           

Cher's delivery of this rant in Witches of Eastwick is iconic.

Burlesque is a 2010 American backstage musical film written and directed by Steven Antin. It stars Cher, Christina Aguilera, Kristen Bell, Cam Gigandet, Eric Dane, Stanley Tucci, Julianne Hough, Alan Cumming, and Peter Gallagher, and features cameos from Dianna Agron and James Brolin.

Mermaids is a 1990 American family comedy-drama film directed by Richard Benjamin, and starring Cher, Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder, Michael Schoeffling, and Christina Ricci in her film debut. Based on Patty Dann's 1986 novel of the same name, and set in 1963, its plot follows a neurotic teenage girl who moves with her wayward mother and younger sister to a small town in Massachusetts.

Silkwood is a 1983 American biographical drama film directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher.

The Witches of Eastwick is a 1987 American dark fantasy comedy film directed by George Miller from a screenplay by Michael Cristofer, based on the 1984 novel by John Updike. It stars Jack Nicholson alongside Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Veronica Cartwright.

In Season 1, Episode 117, "Cher Revises Poetry," we ended famous poems with lines from Cher movies, including the Dolly Pelliker line, "Goddamn government fucks you coming and going!" 

Listen to the Green Acres theme song here.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Visit Richie Hofmann's website here: https://www.richiehofmann.com/ which includes links to many of the poems Richie reads for us in the episode.

Purchase The Bronze Arms 

Check out a reading Richie gave at LA's Hammer Museum in April 2022 here (~45 minutes)

Poets we mention in this episode include:

John Ashbery

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a Pisces. A portrait of EBB hung in Emily Dickinson's bedroom.

Robert Browning, especially "My Last Duchess"

Elizabeth Bishop

Anne Bronte, author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Charlotte Bronte, author of  5 novels, including Villette, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor, which was published posthumously in 1857. Upon her death, she left two chapters of an unfinished narrative called Emma. 

Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights

Catullus threatens two friends who have insulted him with both irrumatio and pedicatio in his "Carmen 16" 

Amy Clampitt

Allen Ginsberg

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Robert Lowell, particularly his poem "Skunk Hour." For more about Lowell's violence towards his wives, receipts are here and here.  

J.D. McClatchy

Frank O'Hara, particularly his manifesto "Personism"; his poem "Having a Coke with You,"; several poems titled "On Rachmaninoff's Birthday," like this one; and the 56 poems he titled simply "Poem," including "Poem [I will always love you]," "Poem [I live above a dyke bar and I'm happy.]," "Poem [Dee Dum, dee dum, dum dum, dee da]," and "Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)."

Christina Rosetti, whose middle name is Georgina.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

The Rossetti children were quite artistic. There were two others in addition to Dante and Christina: Maria Rossetti, who published A Shadow of Dante (1871), and William Michael Rossetti, who became an editor, man of letters, and memoirist.

Gertrude Stein  

We also mention Susan M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's landmark book, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, published by Yale UP in 1979 and reissued in 2020. 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Visit Richie Hofmann's website here: https://www.richiehofmann.com/ which includes links to many of the poems Richie reads for us in the episode.

Purchase The Bronze Arms 

Check out a reading Richie gave at LA's Hammer Museum in April 2022 here (~45 minutes)

Watch Bette Middler sing "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy here. 

To see the clip from Absolutely Fabulous we reference in the show, go here.

 For more about the recent sandals Chanel showed in their 2027 resort collection, read this article in Vogue.

Read Richie's essay remembering Louise Glück, published in CNN, here.  

REduardo Corral published Guillotine with Graywolf in 2020; it was Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and was a Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Buy it here! 

Richie references the Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) poem "Whoso List to Hunt"

Carl Phillips wrote on Instagram about The Bronze Arms: "Novelistic, cinematic…It’s been more than a moment since I read a book of poems so accomplished not only poem by poem but as a book with a sensibility so clear and at the same time so layered in different shades of mystery — as if torn between withholding, craving, and demanding intimacy, all three at once…Congratulations @richiehof — I read the whole book last night, and here I am, starting all over —"

Read more about the poet Kara van de Graaf, author of Spitting Image (SIU Press, 2018) on her website here: https://www.karavandegraaf.com

Learn more about the poet Will Brewer via his website: https://www.williambrewer.net

Anne Carson's translations of Sappho are collected in her book If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho first published in 2002. It contains Greek text on facing pages, based on Eva-Maria Voigt's 1971 critical edition. Carson's translation closely follows the word-order of Sappho's Greek, and marks lacunae in the manuscripts with square brackets.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Xavier Searle is a poet and educator. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets University & College Prize, their work has appeared in The Broken Plate, Stone of Madness, and the anthology Broken Olive Branches. They hold an MFA from North Carolina State University. Read their poem "Elegy." 

Deon Robinson (he/him) is a Queer Afro-Latino poet born-and-raised in The Bronx. He received his B.A. in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University, where he was a two-time recipient of the Janet C. Weis Prize for Literary Excellence. Currently, he is a first year MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Urbana-Champaign where he is a recipient of a Graduate College Master's Fellowship and selected by Adrian Matejka for the 2022 Hobart L. and Mary Kay Peer Memorial Award. Read Deon Robinson's "(Pleasure-Knowledge) (Knowledge-Pain)" from The Adroit Journal. Visit his website: https://djrthepoet.weebly.com 

Kaitlin Hsu 徐欣 (she/她) is a queer Taiwanese poet, translator and editor from the Bay Area. Her work can be found in A Public Space, Poet Lore, Peach Mag and elsewhere. She is a 2024 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and works at Kaya Press as an associate editor. Hsu was also a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Check out Hsu's website at https://myrefoli.github.io and read her poem "As a Child, I Pretended to Be a Tree" here.

Stefania Gomez is a 2025 Luminarts Fellow in Poetry and a 2023 Fulbright Research Award Grantee, and a finalist for the 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and 2023-2024 Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship Semifinalist. She has received additional fellowships from the Dirt Palace, Sewanee Writers Workshop, Lambda Literary, and the International Quilt Museum. She received her MFA in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and teaches Creative Writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts, Chicago’s first public arts high school. Read her poem "Wreck" here and check out her website here. 

Another Gomez poem worth your time is "At the New York City AIDS Memorial"

John Bonanni founded and edits the Cape Cod Review. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Foglifter, Black Warrior Review, Washington Square Review, Florida Review, and Gulf Coast, and his literary criticism has been featured in DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, and The Kenyon Review. He teaches on Cape Cod. Visit his website and read "Elegy for Gaeton Dugas" here. Bonnani's book Retrovirology, won the Donald Hall Prize (judged by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers) and will be available in September from the Pitt Poetry Series. 

Alec Hershman is the author of the chapbooks Permanent and Wonderful Storage  (2019) and The Egg Goes Under (2017), both from Seven Kitchens Press. He lives in Michigan where he teaches literature and writing to college students. His poetry appears widely in literary journals and magazines such as Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, The Journal, Sycamore Review, DIAGRAM, Columbia, The National Poetry Review, and Harpur Palate. You can find links to his work online at https://alechershmanpoetry.com. Read Hershman's "Mercury Fields." 

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. She has received support from The Pew Center for the Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poem-A-Day, The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Rumpus and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she’s featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to The White House. Currently, she is developing her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre, which centers the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders. Read or listen to Frohman's poem "Lady Jordan" here and check her website out here: https://www.denicefrohman.com

Zachary Scalzo (he/they) is a queer writer, translator, and theatremaker. They can be found at azachofalltrades.com and on Instagram at @zjscalzo. Their poetry has appeared in journals including Dear Poetry, Ghost City Review, and &Change. Read their poem “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly.” 

Journalist Randy Shilts popularized the concept of "Patient Zero" in his 1987 book, And the Band Played On. By 1987, however, it was known that an infected individual might not display symptoms for several years, and that the study on which Shilts based his assumption was unlikely to have revealed a network of infection. Still, Shilts uncritically spread the story of the Los Angeles cluster study and its ‘Patient 0,’ with long-standing consequences. For more about this, read here.

Director Laurie Lynd released a documentary in 2019, Killing Patient Zero, which delves more into Gaeton Dugas's life. Read more about the documentary here.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Check out Felice Picano's website https://www.felicepicano.net/, and this tribute to the writer, who died in 2025 at the age of 81. 

For more about how Saint Sebastian became a queer icon, read here. 

Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues is available in many formats on Feinberg's website: https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/

In addition to publishing poetry and prose, Darrell g.h. Schramm writes for national and international rose publications, especially on heritage roses. He edits Rose Letter, a small quarterly of the Heritage Roses Group, and a newsletter The Vintage Rose for The Friends of Vintage Roses. For many years, he taught rhetoric at the University of San Francisco.

Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families was edited by John Preston and published by Plume in 1994.

Check out "The Truth That Must Be Told: Gay Subjectivity, Homophobia, and Social History in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'" by Dean Shackleford in The Tennessee Williams  Annual Review (available through jstor). 

Read more of Richard McCann's poem "Days of 1990" from Ghost Letters (buy it from Alice James Books here).

The book David Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side was edited by by Sylvère Lotringer, Giancarlo Ambrosino, Chris Kraus, Hedi El Kholti, Justin Cavin, and Jennifer Doyle, and it was published by Semiotext(e). The book resulted from Wojnarowicz's meetings with Lotringer; they'd arranged to meet In February 1991 to conduct a long-awaited dialogue on Wojnarowicz’s work. Wojnarowicz was then at the peak of his notoriety as the fiercest antagonist of morals crusader Senator Jesse Helms–a notoriety that Wojnarowicz alternately embraced and rejected. Already suffering the last stages of AIDS, David saw his dialogue with Lotringer as a chance to set the record straight on his aspirations, his personal history, and his political views. 

Check out this video of Wojnarowicz reading "All I Can Feel Is the Pressure"

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Watch a brief biographical video about Amy Lowell here. 

Poems we mention include these by Amy Lowell:

"Sword Blades and Poppy Seed"

"Opal"

"The Letter"

"A Winter Ride" (which includes the line "Everything mortal has moments immortal"; the poem appeared in her first book, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass [Houghton Mifflin, 1912]).

"A Decade"

"September, 1918" (which we discuss at length)

And these by Robert Lowell:

"Night Sweat"

"Home After Three Months Away"

"The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" which includes the line "The Lord survives the rainbow of his will."

"Reading Myself"

Watch a longer documentary about Robert Lowell here (~60 min).

Here's the music video for Chappell Roan's "Casual"

Here's an article about Amy and Robert Lowell that's worth reading. 

Here's a link to "Amy Lowell: Selected Poems" edited by Honor Moore; watch Moore discuss Lowell here (~60 min).

Watch Naomi Shihab Nye read Amy Lowell's "The Garden by Moonlight."

Watch Kids Magazine TV 

A bit about hyphenated use of words like "to-day" vs "today." In Old and in Middle English, the practice was to join the time with the preposition, using a hyphen "to-day," and "to-morrow," and "to-night," for instance. As the sense of their use as single notions developed, the two elements were brought together in written language (i.e., to night, to-night, and tonight). Nineteenth-century dictionaries opted for the hyphen in all three words. The OED shows hyphenated examples throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th. Latest examples are of to-day (1912), to-night (1908), and to-morrow (1927, with a possible further example as late as 1959). (Adapted from this article).

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

"The Crying Towel" was first published in The Massachusetts Review Volume 57, Issue 4

Read a short essay  Kasischke wrote about the beginning of her poem "The First Resurrection" 

Uma Thurman starred in The Life Before Her Eyes (2007), adapted from Kasischke's novel of the same name. Evan Rachel Wood plays the younger version of the Uma Thurman character. Her other novels adapted for film include White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), directed by Gregg Araki and starring Shailene Woodley and Suspicious River (2000), directed by Lynne Stopkewich and starring Molly Parker. Kasischke also co-wrote the screenplay for this dark thriller.

Laura Kasischke's novel The Lifeguard is available from Red Hen Press here, Read an interview about the novel here. 

Alberto Giacometti "Woman with Her Throat Cut (Femme égorgée)" serves as the ekphrastic inspiration for Kasischke's poem of the same name. View the artwork here. Giacometti completed the sculpture in 1932 and used bronze cast. Dimensions are 22.00 x 87.50 x 53.50 cm (or roughly 8.5 x 34.5 x 21 inches). Lucy Flint writes that the human figure is treated brutally in Giacometti's piece, and the woman appears in insectlike form. Woman with Her Throat Cut "is a particularly vicious image: the body is splayed open, disemboweled, arched in a paroxysm of sex and death. The psychological torment and the sadistic misogyny projected by this sculpture are in startling contrast to the serenity of other contemporaneous pieces by Giacometti, such as Woman Walking." (article on the Guggenheim site).

Watch Kasischke give a reading here, here, and here. 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Show Notes:

Aaron mentions the Marie Howe poem "Letter to My Sister" from The Good Thief, which Howe talks about here. 

Aaron reads his poem "After My Mother Apologized for My Childhood, We Went to Brunch," which you can hear him read again here -- on his cd Outside the Lines. 

You can read James's poem "Family Portrait" here. 

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Show Notes:

Check out Michael Nava's wonderful essay "Creating a Literary Culture: A Short, Selective, and Incomplete History of LGBT Publishing, Part II"

Learn more about Gendertrash zine

Read Melvin Dixon's essay "I'll Be Somewhere Listening for My Name." 

Read more about Texas Tech's limitations on studying gender and sexuality.

Sabah as-Sabah's work appears in many 90s anthologies, including In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers (1992; edited by Kevin Powell & Ras Baraka), Catch the Fire!!: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (1998), and The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets (ed. Assotto Saint, 1991).  

Read Audre Lorde's "The Electric Slide Boogie" in The Marvelous Arithmetic of Distance: 1987-1992.

Read Marilyn Hacker's "The Boy"

Justin Chin's "Cocksucker's Blues" is included in his first book of poems, Bite Hard (1997). Watch a tribute to Chin here. 

Here's the table of contents (with some hyperlinks) of The World in Us, edited by Elena Georgiou and Michael Lassell.

You can read Maureen Seaton's "Blonde Ambition" (and the entirety of Furious Cooking)

Read Dennis Cooper's "After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade"

Read Gerry Gomez Pearlberg's "Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette"

Some queer poets/poems we mention:

 Eileen Myles, "American Poem"

JD McClatchy, "My Mammogram"

David Trinidad

Rafael Campo, The Other Man Was Me

Eloise Klein Healy

Frank Paino, The Rapture of Matter

Paul Monette, 18 Elegies for Rog

Joan Larkin

Judy Grahn

Robin Becker

Maggie Anderson

Richard McCann, Ghost Letters

Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat

Chrystos

Cheryl Clarke

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Show Notes:

Poems we read and texts we mention include:

Dorianne Laux, "The Lovers" (Visit Laux's website here).

Jenny Johnson, "Daddy Scene" (published in Cherry Tree Issue 11). Subscribe here. Read Jenny's essay "Butch Blowjob" in Bomb Magazine.

sam sax, "Ode to the Belt" can be read in The Nation Sept 2023--or you can watch sam perform the poem here. 

If you're looking for a theory reading about sexuality, might we recommend Sigmund Freud's "Three Contributions To The Theory Of Sex"

Jericho Brown's "Host" appears in The New Testament

Timothy Liu's "The Size of It" appeared in The Paris Review Fall 1994

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's "Sex" 

Sophie Cabot Black, "Interrogation"

You can read Minnie Bruce Pratt's "Peach" here (just scroll down/search for "peach").

Aaron reads from this article ("50 interesting sex facts...") in the fact check. 

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

Show Notes:

Read Frank O'Hara's "Homosexuality"

For more about Chester Kallman, read here. Kallman was a poet, librettist, and writer who was also Auden's partner (and, later, his estate's executor). He published three collections of poems: Storm at Castelfranco (1956), Absent and Present (1963), and The Sense of Occasion (1971). 

Grace Hartigan's relationship with Frank O'Hara is detailed a bit more in this Sebastian Smee essay in Washington Post: "Portrait of a Poet." 

Read O'Hara's "In Memory of My Feelings"

Much of Frank O'Hara's papers are at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC

Read a review of Ada Calhoun's memoir "Also a Poet," about her father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who was working on a memorial project about O'Hara when he died. Calhoun believes that her father’s book was torpedoed by O’Hara’s sister and literary executor, Maureen Granville-Smith Calhoun. 

For more about The Glory Hole Café in Buenos Aires (which we mention in the show), go here.

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Take a look at the Tracey Emin sculpture "My Bed." It was sold at auction by Christie’s in July 2014 for £2.5 million to German collector Count Christian Duerckheim.

Read Larry Levis's poem "Boy in Video Arcade"

Read Dickinson's 670 ("One Need not be a Chamber to be Haunted"). For more variations she included on the fascicle, visit the Emily Dickinson Online archive at Harvard's Houghton Library here. 

In an interview with Melanie Brooks and published in Creative Nonfiction (Winter 2017), Mark Doty says about grief: "It was like just pushing my way up this very tall, spirally staircase. I'd write and cry and write and cry and write and cry." Read the essay here (jstor access required).

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Paul Tran's "Provenance" appeared first February 22/March 1, 2021 issue of The Nation and was included in All the Flowers Kneeling, which was published by Penguin in 2022 and was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Open Book Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Visit Tran's website here: https://iampaultran.com/

The poem "'What Do Women Want?'" is from Kim Addonizio's Tell Me (2000)

Read "Boy in a Stolen Evening Gown" by Saeed Jones

Read "Esta Noche" by Mark Doty

The poem we read of Allison Benis White's is from “Please Bury Me in This” [Maybe my arms lifted ...]"

In recollection of a first memory in A Sketch of the Past, Virginia Woolf wrote: "My mother would come out onto her balcony in a white dressing gown. There were passion flowers growing on the wall; they were great starry blossoms, with purple streaks, and large green buds, part empty, part full."

Read torrin a. greathouse's "Ekphrasis on My Rapist's Wedding Dress" and visit their website: https://www.torringreathouse.com/

Read Victoria Chang's "OBIT [The Blue Dress]" from her 2020 book, Obit. You can watch Chang read from Obit here (~43 min). 

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Buy Joy's prizewinning collection of poems, Horsepower, from the University of Pittsburgh Press here or from Loyalty Books, a  Black, Queer, and Asian owned independent bookstore in DC.

Visit Joy Priest's website: https://www.joypriest.com

You can see Joy reading from her work here, here, and here. Or read this interview with her here.

Read Joy's ode to Whitney Houston, "When I See the Stars in the Night Sky"

Nikky Finney won the 2011 National Book Award for her book Head Off and Split. Watch her iconic speech here. 

Read more about American Honey, a film by Andrea Arnold starring Sasha Lane

We mention a few forms, including the Abecedarian and the Sestina. Click the links for more information about them.

 Poets we mention:

Emily Dickinson and Poem 269 ("Wild nights!")

Hear poet Jane Kenyon read her poem "Otherwise."

Donald Hall

Terrance Hayes

Ross Gay

Louise Glück's "Anniversary"

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

James posted some AWP tips on Facebook here. 

For the curious, AWP has posted its "Community Participation in #AWP26 Conference & Bookfair" stats here.

The journals mentioned on the "Editing for Change and Community" panel were:

Small Orange edited by Carlie Hoffman. Carlie's poems were included in our Breaking Form episode "The Hof[f]man[n]s" which you can listen to here.

Georgia Review edited by Gerald Maa. 

Brink edited by Nina Lohman 

Hopkins Review edited by Dora Malech

Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal at Washington College, by James. 

AWP has said it will post the video of John Waters's keynote address for conference registrants to view, but we can't find it yet. But if you're curious, here's a written recap of the event by Baltimore Fishbowl.

You can find The Adroit Journal online at  https://theadroitjournal.org. They're open for submissions currently (til April 1, 2026). They are a paying market. 

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

While the recording released by the Academy of American Poets of Glück reading from The Wild Iris and other work can be purchased online, you can also hear many of these poems read on SoundCloud here.  

Much of our information about Glück's process comes from this interview with the poet Devin Becker, who was also her former student.

Read Richie Hofmann's remembrance here. 

 Some of the poems from The Wild Iris that we mention (and links to read them) are:

Witchgrass

The Red Poppy

Clear Morning

The Garden

Vespers

Retreating Light

The White Lilies, which you can hear read by Glück here.

We also mention the poem "Purple Bathing Suit" from Meadowlands, the book which follows The Wild Iris. 

Louise' Glücks astrological chart is here. (Taurus sun, Leo rising, Scorpio moon.)

Watch interviews with Glück:

1982, for Kalliope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAB-JqABvq8

2004, at Smith College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw0nlVYZ39A

 2012, Academy of Achievement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1rpGy8XRzU

 2016, with Peter Streckfus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeoaLNGy_Ms

2020, for NYPL with Colm Tóibín, on writing The Wild Iris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3kQGM_KhHQ

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Marilyn Nelson's poem in The New Yorker that Aaron was thinking of is "Pigeon and Hawk."

Poets we mention include (with a poem by each):

Marie Howe

Cleopatra Mathis

Linda Gregg

Lucie Brock-Broido

Adrienne Rich

Yvor Winters

Frank O'Hara

Anna Akhmatova

Lynn Melnick

Mary Jo Bang

Jean Valentines, "Ghost Elephants"

Larry Levis and Aaron's poem "Elegy" which references Levis's "The Smell of the Sea"

James Merrill

Brenda Hillman

Richard Howard

Shaon Olds

Henry David Thoreau

Laura Kasischke

Lucille Clifton

Aracelis Girmay

Kenneth Koch

Rupi Kaur

Jacques J. Rancourt

Terrance Hayes

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Heather Christle's post sparked this episode's discussion and can be found here. Christle's most recent book of poetry is Paper Crown (Wesleyan UP, August 2025)

While there isn't an out gay character in Dead Poets Society, there is some gay-coded stuff going on. Read Kaeya Merchant's fabulous essay on the topic: "Dead Poets Society is Queer; Here’s Why"

 The Garth Greenwell essay on Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance which Aaron references was also published in the Yale Review. Check out Garth's website at https://www.garthgreenwell.com

At the end of the show, we quote the line "What did you think, that joy was some slight thing?" which is from Mark Doty's "Visitation"

Other poems or poets we reference are:

Garret Hongo's "What For"

e.e. cummings, "somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond"

David Bottoms, "Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt"

A.E. Stallings, "Sea Girls"

Jorie Graham, "At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body"

Emily Dickinson, Poem 591

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Paul Verlaine was born in 1844. Read more about him here. Verlaine was an Aries sun, Leo Moon, and Scorpio ascendant.

Arthur Rimbaud was born on October 20, 1854, and you can read more about him here. Rimbaud was a triple Libra (sun, moon, ascendant). 

Rimbaud met Verlaine in September 1871, a month before his 18th birthday. Following his tumultuous relationship with Paul Verlaine, which ended in 1873, Rimbaud traveled extensively through Europe, often on foot. He became a trader/merchant, selling coffee, hides, and eventually guns, becoming a "soldier of fortune." In 1891, a tumor developed on his right knee and forced him to return to Paris and died later that year at 37, without knowing how popular his poems had become in Symbolist circles.  The gun Verlaine used to shoot Rimbaud recently went up for auction.

One of the poems Rimbaud sent to Verlaine in 1871 was "Le Dormer du Val," which you can watch recited as part of the Favorite Poem Project here. (Recited by chef Jacques Pépin.) 

Rimbaud and Verlaine wrote a collaborative poem, "Sonnet to the Asshole" which you can read (and read about) here. 

 In 2016, the poet Eileen Myles told The New York Times, "I think men should stop writing books. I think men should stop making movies or television. Say, for 50 to 100 years. Sounds great." Read the interview here.

When we reference "tongue in the butt," we are talking about a segment from an early Breaking Form season 1 show called "Bad Animals." Check it out here, and hit the 14:30 mark. 

If you've never read Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," stop what you're doing and read it here.

Please Support Breaking Form!
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Read Richard Wilbur's "The House" from Anterooms: New Poems and Translation (2010). Watch Wilbur read his iconic poem, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"

Here is Richard Howard's "Oystering" from The Damages (1967). You can watch Howard give a reading here. And check out Howard's sequel to Browning's "My Last Duchess" here.

Read Richard Blanco's "Burning in the Rain" from Looking for The Gulf Motel (1998). Watch Blanco deliver the inaugural poem here. 

Read Richard Brautigan's "Love Poem" and watch Brautigan give a reading and interview here.

Check out Richard Aldington's poem "Images" from Images Old and New (The Four Seas Press, 1916). Watch an introduction to Aldington here. 

 Here is Jana Prikryl's poem "To Tell of Bodies Changed" from The After Party (2016). Watch a reading Prikryl gave at the Hammer Museum here. 

 Read Richard Newman's "Coins." Watch Newman give a reading here.

The Richard Jones poem we read is "Rest" from The Correct Spelling and Exact Meaning (2010). Watch Jones give a reading for Smartish Pace here. 

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

Read the London Review of Books praising Aracelis Girmay's volume, How to Carry Water: Selected Poems by Lucille Clifton. 

Watch Girmay read Clifton's poem "praise song."

Learn more about Lucille Clifton here, here, and here. 

Explore more about The Clifton House, and learn more about Clifton's life in Baltimore. 

Watch Debby Boone sing her 1977 hit, "You Light Up My Life" 

Listen to Deborah Ann Gibson sing "On My Own" from Les Misérables. 

Here is the trailer for Boxing Helena, directed by Jennifer Lynch.

Read more about the friendship between Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.

For more about Clifton's children's book series, Everett Anderson, read here.

Here is a partial list of the poems we read and discuss on the show:

"my friends"

"a poem written for many moynihans"

"5/23/67 RIP" (for Langston Hughes)

"alabama 9/15/63" (which appeared in a 1999 special folio of Callalo)

"jasper Texas 1998" in Ploughshares Issue #78 Spring 1999

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49491/jasper-texas-1998

"If I should (to clark kent)"

"further note to clark"

"hag riding"

"to my last period"

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

NOTES:

Gwendolyn Brooks published "The Bean Eaters" in Poetry Magazine in 1959. Check out the video of this interview with Gwendolyn Brooks. 

Here is Sylvia Plath's "Aftermath." Listen to this October 1962 interview with Plath by Peter Orr for the British Council. 

Read Gary Soto's "Avocado Lake." 

Linda Pastan published her poem "Waiting Room" in the October 1984 issue of Poetry. 

Here's Suji Kwok Kim's "Occupation" which appeared in the July 1994 Poetry. Here is a 2008 reading by Kim (~28 min).

Watch Cher introduce her song "Just Like Jesse James" during her Farewell Tour.

Read "The Speed of Darkness" by Muriel Rukeyser.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. And BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. 

James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

NOTES:

Read "Hap" by Thomas Hardy. And watch a here's a video enactment/reading of "Hap" by Thomas Hardy. And watch a reading/enactment of the poem here. 

Read a terrific essay about Hardy's poem published by the Thomas Hardy Society here. 

Thomas Hardy wrote 947 poems, and you can read them all online here.  

For more about Taylor Swift's newest album's variations, read this piece in Vareity.

Tom Brady does not have a brother who plays football. 

Gayle King interviewed Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams at the Golden Globes. See the viral-video exchange here. 

Here's a reddit thread on being rejected on Christmas Eve.  

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by Amy Lowell and Jubi Arriola-Headley

Check out Jubi Arriola-Headley's website here, and an obituary here. 

Learn more about Amy Lowell here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amy-lowell

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by Giada Scodellaro and Natalie Louise Tombasco.

Check out Giada Scodellaro's website here: https://giadascodellaro.com/

Check out Natalie Louise Tombasco's website: https://natalielouisetombasco.com/

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by Kelli Russell Agodon and Afaa Michael Weaver.

Learn more about Afaa Michael Weaver here: https://www.theshipmanagency.com/afaa-michael-weaver

Check out Kelli Russell Agodon's website: https://www.agodon.com/index.html

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by Jonterri Gadson & Patrica Traxler

Check out Jonterri Gadson's website: https://www.jonterrigadson.com/

You can read more about Patricia Traxler on this Wikipedia page.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by Mary Helen Callier & Virginia Chase Sutton

Check out Mary Helen Callier's website: https://maryhelencallier.com/

Check out Virginia Chase Sutton's website: https://www.virginiachasesutton.com/

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

We read poems by David Hernandez and Dorian Elizabeth Knapp. 

Check out Dorian Elizabeth Knapp's website: https://dorianelizabethknapp.com/

Check out David Hernandez's website: http://www.davidahernandez.com/

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 discussed in this episode include:

Sharon Olds: "The Race"; "Topography"; "First" 

Louise Glück: "Widows"; "Celestial Music"; "The Mirror" (text); "The Mirror" (audio only); "Parable of the Dove"

Jorie Graham: "Masaccio's Expulsion"; "At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Dead"; "Salmon" 

Mark Doty: "Visitation"; "Lament-Heaven" 

Vijay Seshadri: "The Disappearances" & an essay about the poem here. 

Linda Gregg: "Summer in a Small Town"; "Sigismundo"; "Let Birds"; "We Manage Most When We Manage Small"

Etheridge Knight: "Feeling Fucked Up"

 C. Dale Young: "Torn"; check out this review of the book by Dilruba Ahmed in Kenyon Review here.

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Watch TLC's music video for "No Scrubs" 

Discover more about Jehanne Dubrow's The Arranged Marriage, about which Claudia Rankine writes,"The poet here is positioned to observe, to picture, and to record in order to communicate coherence in the face of incoherence."

Aaron reads: Sonia Sanchez "Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman." Learn more about Tubman here.  

Read  Agha Shahid Ali's ghazal, "Tonight". Shahid died in 2001. 

Here's more about the triolet.  For a few examples of the form, here's Gabriel Fried's "Parenting Triolet" and Rachel Hadas's "Fortress" 

Read more about the Golden Shovel here, and read Terrance Hayes's "Golden Shovel." 

Read more about the Duplex, or watch Jericho Brown explain it here. Read Jericho Brown's "Duplex" or watch him read the poem here.

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Show Notes:

See Tracy K. Smith read from Life on Mars at the Kelly Writers' House .

Here's a reminiscence of Lucie Brock-Broido by her student, Stephanie Burt. Read more Brock-Broido-isms on writing & wonderment here.

Read Diane Seuss's "My Education," first published in Massachusetts Review and which appeared later in her 2024 book Modern Poetry.

Joy Harjo's poem "She Had Some Horses" was published in the book of the same name by Thunder's Mouth Press in 1983 and reissued in 1997. The link is to the original poem Tracy reads on the show.

Read reviews of Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times here, here, and here.

Visit Tracy's website here. 

Two more poets who appear in Fear Less are Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Read her "The Ultra-Black Fish" & follow her on Instagram) and Francisco Marquez (read his "Provincetown")

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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, 1971

Ethna 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, 1998

Julia 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

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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/

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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 Podcast

Nickole 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. 

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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 Sepolcro

Paul 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. 

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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 Halberstam

For 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.

Please Support Breaking Form!
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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 Clifton

Joe 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 Mohabir

Arthur 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" 

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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.com

According 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.org

Monroeville 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.

Please Support Breaking Form!
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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.com

Rebecca 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. 

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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 Poem

Elizabeth (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.

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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 here

Read 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-douglas

Aaron 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. 

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

SHOW NOTES:

Sharon Olds says that early in her poetic career, when she'd send out her poems, "[t]hey came back often with very angry notes." Receipt here.  

W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues", or "Stop all the clocks" appeared in his book Another Time. The poem experienced renewed popularity after being read in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). "Funeral Blues" has since been cited as one of the most popular modern poems in the United Kingdom. Watch the poem read in the movie here. 

Auden's "First Things First" appeared in The New Yorker in 1957. Hear Auden read the poem here. 

Watch the incredible Michael Sheen read Auden's "September 1, 1939" here. Receipts about Auden's struggle with the end are here. 

Read Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Mother" and listen here to Diane Seuss talk about this poem with us on Breaking Form. 

Read Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour" or listen to him read it here. (It'll be a memorable experience!)

The poem we reference of Lynda Hull's is "Chiffon" which opens her book The Only World (HarperCollins 1995).

Read Robinson Jeffers's "Birds and Fishes"

Here's Frost's "Birches"

Aaron Smith's poem is "Jennifer Lawrence" can be read here.

Mark Doty's poem "Visitation" first appeared in The Paris Review. 

Aiden Shaw appeared in Roll in the Hay, but did not grace the sets of Big River.

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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 order I Do Know Some Things here. Visit Richard Siken's website here, and read work from the new book.

Read Christopher Nelson's review of I Do Know Some Things here.

Some interviews with Richard we can recommend:

   This one in Adroit Journal

   This one in BOMB Magazine

   And this one in Gulf Coast from 2005, with James Allen Hall.

Paratext is the text surrounding the main published text (like the book jacket copy, the blurbs, the cover text, etc).

For more about War of the Foxes, check out this short video "Postcards from Richard Siken"

Louise Glück (1943-2023) selected Siken's first book Crush for the Yale Series of Young Poets Prize. For more about Glück, including her period of silences, read here.

For more about the tester straw we mention, click here.

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

SHOW NOTES:

Visit Carlie Hoffman on the web here. She is the author of three books, most recently One More Like This World (Four Way, 2025). 

We read these poems by Carlie:

     Point of View Where Orpheus Makes a Pit Stop at a Fortune Teller in St. Germain

     The Year Made Out of a Cut in Your Civilization

     Panorama After Foreclosure

     After Translating the Women of the Twentieth Century

Read more about Michael Hofmann here. He is a Virgo born in Germany to a novelist and a teacher. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English." 

We read these poems by Michael:

     Author, Author

     Night

     White Noise

     Sentence

     For Adam

Richie Hofmann is the author of 2 books, in addition to the forthcoming The Bronze Arms (Knopf). Visit his website at https://www.richiehofmann.com. Read his poem "Male Beauty," which we quote in the episode, here. 

We read the following poems from Richie:

     Breed Me

     Arms

     Young People

     Keys to the City

     Things that Are Rare

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

SHOW NOTES:

 Poems/Poets mentioned in this week's show include:

Traci Brimhall, "Shelter in Place." Visit Brimhall's website here. And you can watch her craft talk on revision here (1 hour).

 José Olivarez, "Eat the Rich." Watch Olivarez read his poem "Guapo" here. And visit him online: https://joseolivarez.com/

Jayne Cortez, "I Am New York City"

Peter Oresick, "When in 2009 the G20 Summit Convened in Pittsburgh"

James Wright, "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio"

Adrian Matejka, "16 Bars Poetica." Listen to a fascinating reading and talk Matejka gave at Bread Loaf in 2024 on his newest book, Last on His Feet, a graphic novel about the boxer Jack Jackson. Matejka's website is https://www.adrianmatejka.com/ 

Megan Pinto, "Tonight it is Snowing in Rome." Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024). Visit her online at https://www.meganpinto.com/. And watch her give a reading for Massachusetts Review.

Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

Denis Johnson's "Now" Watch Johnson read in 2016 at Cornell here (~40 min).

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Jerusalem"

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Poems mentioned in this episode:

Tomas Transtromer: "The Name" (translated by May Swenson with Leif Sjöberg)

Cornelius Eady: "My Heart" Eady also turned Brutal Imagination into a play, too, and you can read the Variety review here.

Wayne Koestenbaum's "Rhaposdy" from Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender. Read a review of the book and check out Koestenbaum's website here. 

Lucia Perrillo: "Skin" Read more about Perrillo. Or watch her read from Inseminating the Elephant, which won the 2010 Bobbit Prize, at the Library of Congress here.

Visit Dorianne Laux's website here.

 James asked folks to name their touchstone poems (with links) and this Facebook post was born..... check out some other incredible poetry touchstones! 

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Robyn Schiff's most recent book is Information Desk: An Epic (Penguin Poets, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024).

Read more about Karyna McGlynn's book I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl

Check out Randall Mann's latest book, a new and selected, from Copper Canyon.

Do yourself a favor and buy Laura Newbern's book A Night in the Country (also available on the awful conglomerate) and check out Newbern's website.

Watch this tribute to Eavan Boland. 

You can find many poems of Richard Siken's on his website. 

Watch this half-hour interview with Mark Strand (from when he was Poet Laureate). 

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Quan Barry's "The 1986 Apple Super Bowl Commercial as Intervention" refers to this iconic 1984 Apple Computer commercial aired during the SuperBowl.

The Brigit Pegeen Kelly poem we mention is "Three Cows and the Moon" was originally published in New England Review in 1993. You can hear Kelly read the poem here (~10 minutes). It's fucking worth it!

William Stafford, "Traveling Through the Dark" was the title poem of Stafford's 2nd book, published in 1962, which won the 1963 National Book Award. To look at some drafts of this poem, check out the Stafford archive online. Hear him read it here.

Read more about Kevin Killian's Selected Amazon Reviews.  And check out this brief (~1min) Instagram post of Killian reading from it here. 

The poem by Linda Gregg that James mentions (with women standing in the trees knocking down figs) is "The Poet Goes About Her Business." 

You can read Kate Daniels "War Photograph" here. For more about the photograph and the people in it, read this article.

Read Nazim Hikmet's "On Living" and learn more about Hikmet here. 

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

You can find John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason here.

Check out an excerpt in the NYT from Michael Schmidt Lives of the Poets. 

Here's an NPR review of Olivia Laing's Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. For more about Agnes Martin by Olivia Laing, check out this interview. Maggie Nelson engaged in this conversation with Laing about Laing's book Everybody. 

Check out this reading and conversation between Adam Moss, the author of The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing, and two of his subjects: Marie Howe and Michael Cunningham. 

Purchase Rebecca Brown's The Gifts of the Body, which Publisher's Weekly called "beautifully controlled, immensely affecting." It is 176 pages.

You can get Brown's What Keeps Me Here (stories) here.

Read this review of Annie Ernaux's The Use of Photography, which includes some excerpts from the book.

Read James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son."

For more about Kevin Killian's Selected Amazon Reviews, click here.

Here's an NPR "Fresh Air" interview with Toni Morrison about writing Beloved. 

Watch Wayne Koestenbaum's "Why I Make Mini-Movies"

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Listen to a reading Scott Cohen gave with poet  Tom Weatherly at St. Mark's Poetry Project in 1968. Read his poem "Coke" from a 1971 issue of The Paris Review. 

 David Henderson was raised in Harlem and helped to found the Black Arts Movement. Henderson’s books include Neo-California (North Atlantic Books, 1998) and De Mayor of Harlem (E. P. Dutton, 1970). His first poetry collection, Felix of the Silent Forest, was published by Diane di Prima for Poets Press in 1967 with an introduction by Amiri Baraka. Read 3 of his poems here, or check out his Poem-A-Day selection (from Dec. 19, 2024) here.

Also, check out David Henderson reading his poems with comment in the Recording Laboratory, May 3, 1978

Carter Ratcliff's books on art include examinations of John Singer Sargent, Robert Longo, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol. He won a Guggenheim for his fine art scholarship, and his articles and criticism have appeared widely in such magazines as Art in America, ARTnews, and Artforum. Check out his novel, Tequila Mockingbird and this poem from The Baffler. 

Read more about Iris Rifkin-Gainer here and watch an interview with her regarding her work in dance therapy. Read a poem of hers here too.

Read Edwin Denby's bio as well as three poems here.

David Denby is indeed an American journalist and reviewed films until 2014 for The New Yorker.

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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 Line

We Want it All

Subject to Change

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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. 

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.

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 Poets

Listen 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 Smoke

In 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).

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.

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.

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:

For a few lists of best 21st Century poetry:                                                                                  The Atlantic (which we read in the show).                                                                                The New York Times

Read Mark Strand's titular poem "Man and Camel"

Read Craig Morgan Teicher's review of Glück's Faithful and Virtuous Night

Watch Tracy K. Smith's answer to "Does poetry matter" in this conversation with Tracey E. Hucks at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. If you'd like to see Smith read from her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Life on Mars, here's a particularly good one.

Read "Deception Story" by Solmaz Sharif from Look

James mediated a conversation and workshop with Diane Seuss on poetry and mental health, which can be viewed on YouTube here

Read a selection of poems from Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler

The Brigit Pegeen Kelly poem James talked about in the show is "Closing Time; Iskandariya." Here it is, posted on Ilya Kaminsky's social media. 

Read a portfolio of writers on Kelly's book Song published recently in West Branch online (edited by Shara Lessley with short essays by David Baker, Amit Majmudar, Gabrielle Bates, and C. Dale Young).

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 Association of Writers and Writing Programs can be found online at www.awpwriter.org

 Marcela Fuentes is the author of the award-winning novel Malas and you can find her online at https://www.marcelafuentes.com

Check out the exhibit Flesh World at Central Server Works, showcasing paintings by Monica Berger and Sofia Heftersmith.

Julie Marie Wade's The Mary Yearsis a novella which won The 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, selected by Michael Martone.

Purchase a copy of the Maureen Seaton tribute book When I Was Straight

Check out "From the Motel-By-the-Hour" (originally in The Iowa Review) from Nancy K. Pearson's book Two Minutes of Light from Perugia here.

Claire J. Bateman's book is The Pillow Museum, available from the University of Alabama Press

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn's Girl in a Bear Suit won the Elixir Press Award. Buy it from her on her website: https://www.jenjabailyblackburn.com

Emily Lee Luan won the Nightboat Poetry Prize for Return. Visit her website here.

More information about the Civitella Ranieri Foundation can be found here.  

James's Best American Poetry 2025 selection is called "Inheritance at Corresponding Periods of Life, at Corresponding Seasons of the Year, as Limited by Sex" originally published in Adroit Journal.

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:

Learn more about Tom of Finland, the artist name of Finnish Touko Laaksonen who signed his erotic work "Tom." 

Follow messygayspod on Instagram, or @messygays.bsky.social on Blue Sky, or on FB at MessyGaysPod

Read Heather McHugh's "The Amenities" (care warning: sexual assault)

Read sam sax's "On PrEP or on Prayer [“when i say pre-exposure prophylaxis”]

Read Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose"

Read Diane Wakoski's "Uneasy Rider"

Here's an excerpt from Mark Bibbins's 13th Balloon

Read this poem by Tyehimba Jess

Check out Robin Coste Lewis's page on The Elders Project here. TEP captures and celebrates untold and underrepresented stories of activists, storytellers, and community builders who have witnessed and shaped great change in American public life. 

Read this consideration/critique of Cruising 

Read this interview of Mary Jo Bang.

Stephen King addresses rumors about Musk insults here.

Read this great review of Bianca Stone's fabulous The Mobius Strip Club of Grief.

If you haven't seen the 20th anniversary edition of Richard Siken's Crush, check it out here. 

Check out Nighboat's Rob Halpern's Music for Porn 

Read Jenny Johnson's essay "Butch Blow Job" in Bomb.

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 SUPER GAY POEMS: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall, edited by Stephanie Burt, out on April 1, 2025. 

Read Hera Lindsay Bird's "Bisexuality"

Check out Best New Zealand Poets and 20 Contemporary New Zealand Poets.

Read JD McClatchy's "My Mammogram" 

The article we reference by the founders of AALR is "The World Doesn't Stop for Derek Walcott, or: An Exchange between Coeditors." Gerald Maa and Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis.

Here's a link, if you haven't listened to our episode "We Can Shift the Canon"

Vendler's final book is called Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays, out from Penguin on September 2, 2025.

Read "Breakfast with Miss Bishop"--Helen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishop.

Read here for more about Essex Hemphill.

Stephanie wrote about teaching the Taylor Swift course at Harvard for Vanity Fair.

Read Stephanie's "Taylor's Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift"

The Tay Learning Podcast that Stephanie mentions can be found here.

Read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

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:

Click here for Brenda’s Queer Resistance Playlist 2025 (Spotify).

Check out Brenda's poem "Panopticon" from Interior with Sudden Joy.

Visit Brenda Shaughnessy’s website . And hear her read from her newest book, Tanya here. 

Read more about UC Santa Cruz closing the Feminist Studies Dept here. 

Read more about Maria Ressa

For more about Roland Barthes’s contribution to literary criticism, read here.

While dated, here’s a list of creative writing programs that are LGBTQ+ friendly.

 Read more about Bettina Aptheker

Read more about Donna J. Haraway

Read on for more about the clubs Brenda mentions: Meow Mix, Clit Club, Henrietta Hudson (still open!), Pandora's Box, and more.

Read more about Angela Davis's work here.

For more about Wendy Brown, read her Guggenheim citation here.

You can learn more about Allan Bérubé here.

 Learn more about the incredible Urvashi Vaid here.

Watch/listen to Cécile McLorin Salvant's "Until" here. 

Read more about Kate Clinton on her website here.

For more about Teresa de Lauretis, click here. 

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 Nicole Sealey poem we read at the end of the episode comes from the first four pages of her book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

We revise poems by:

Robert Bly, "The Beauty of Women"

George Herbet, "Death"

Dean Young, "Belief in Magic"

William Stafford, "Accountability"

Billy Collins, "Design"

The video we mention posted by The New Yorker was posted in April 2023 to FaceBook: "How a New Yorker Poetry Editor Selects Poems"

Watch John Travolta introduce Idina Menzel as "the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem" and then Menzel getting her good-natured revenge.

For more about the feminist practice of erasure poetry, we can recommend Erase the Patriarchy: An Anthology of Erasure 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.

NOTES:

Click here for a pdf from the Poetry Society that includes a folio of essays about Sexton's life and work by David Trinidad, Lois Ames, and Maggie Nelson. (Originally published in Crossroads, fall 2001.)

Trinidad talks about Anne Sexton on the podcast here.

And, lastly, we'd be remiss if we did not link to this dishy, well-researched article--again by the fabulous David Trinidad--about the palace intrigue behind Sexton's winning the Pulitzer for Live or Die.

Want to read more about Sexton, faith, and love? Your wait is over. 

Curious about Anne Sexton's houses? Click here! 

Here's an hour of Sexton reading some of her most iconic poems. 

Anne Sexton gave her last public reading at Goucher College in October 1974, three days before she completed suicide. You can find the reading here.

Here are links to some of the poems we mention:

"The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator"

"Menstruation at Forty"

"Her Kind"

"Sylvia's Death"

"The Fury of Cocks"

"Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women"

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.                            

Miguel's SHORE DITCH is available from Barrow Street.

You can purchase Edmund White's new book, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, at BookWoman here. Bookwoman was founded to increase access to queer and feminist literature in Texas nearly fifty years ago. 

Read Colm Tóibín's essay, "On the Casual Brilliance of Edmund White"

Read a tribute to Gary Indiana  in The Guardian here. 

Need a quick definition refresher of auto fiction? Here you go!

 Miguel mentions that composer Arnold Schoenberg's archive destroyed in LA fires, and you can read more about that here. 

Here's a dishy roundup of Nabokov's insults of Dostoevsky

For a bit more about Larry Kramer's objections to The Farewell Symphony, read on.

Learn more about Richard Howard and his poetry here. 

Edmund White and Michael Carroll talk about their relationship, and their experiences writing gay fiction here.

And here's the Interview Magazine article we mention in the episode, in which gay writers ask Edmund White a question: “Tall Blonde With a Big Dick”: 18 Men Ask Edmund White Some Sexy Questions"

 Finally, check out the fabulous Garth Greenwell's website: https://www.garthgreenwell.com