Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall
  • 5.0 (98)
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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. 18h ago ·  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).

  2. Jul 27 ·  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"

  3. Jul 20 ·  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.

  4. Jul 13 ·  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

  5. Jul 6 ·  Bonus

    Breaking Form Selects: Lynda Hull (A Summer Poetry Salon)

    Our summer salon series is here! Please enjoy this episode of Breaking Form Selects: Lynda Hull 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"

  6. Jun 29

    Dolly Pelliker (A Cherapy Episode)

    Season 4 ends with some much-needed poetic Cherapy!  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 f***s you coming and going!"  Listen to the Green Acres theme song here.

  7. Jun 22

    Breed Me (with Special Guest Richie Hofmann)

    Richie Hofmann returns for a game that shows the queens that being well-versed can mean getting well-bred. 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.

  8. Jun 15

    The Bronze Arms (with Special Guest Richie Hofmann)

    The ladies are joined by Richie Hofmann for one hell of a Breaking Form interview! 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.

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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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