The queens summon lines designed to stop readers in their tracks. 

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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.

The queens are joined by poetry crush Richard Siken, & talk heroes, rabbits, robots, & healing.

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:

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.

The hosts get familiar with the poetry of three Hof(f)man(n)s--Carlie, Michael, and Richie.

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:

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

How do poets write about place, and how does place shape a poet? Play along as the queens place these poems!

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/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"

Touchstones part 1 hit so good, we decided to go another round!

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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.

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! 

The queens play poetry matchmakers and nine months later, boom, there's a poetry baby!

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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.

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). 

The gals talk foundational poems--and they might just surprise you!

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.

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. 

The library is open--to prose the queens find indispensable for poets!

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.

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"

The queens put the "arch" in "archive" and rediscover some favorite poetry blasts from the past.

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.

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.

The queens talk literary confidantes; then we discuss the pros and pitfalls of poetic friendships.

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 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