Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall
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James Allen Hall and Aaron Smith talk about their favorite poems and poets, interview amazing writers, laugh a lot, gossip, and get real about life and art.

  1. 5 days ago ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Toi Derricotte (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Ai  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"

  2. 24 Aug

    Breaking Form Selects: Rigoberto González (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Rigoberto González  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"

  3. 17 Aug ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: The Poet Ai -- (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Ai  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"

  4. 10 Aug ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Lucie Brock-Broido (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Lucie Brock-Broido. 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"

  5. 3 Aug ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Tim Dlugos (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Tim Dlugos. 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).

  6. 27 Jul ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Melvin Dixon (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Melvin Dixon. 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"

  7. 20 Jul ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Larry Levis (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Larry Levis--one of our favorite straight guys! 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.

  8. 13 Jul ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Tommye Blount (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Tommye Blount. 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

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James Allen Hall and Aaron Smith talk about their favorite poems and poets, interview amazing writers, laugh a lot, gossip, and get real about life and art.

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