Nerd tops, dom tops, soft tops: the queens go gaga over a discussion of their top poems by favorite 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.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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OnlyForms
Let's get trioleted, girls! The queens delve into some fun poetic forms.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.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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Fear Less (with Special Guest Tracy K. Smith)
Tracy K. Smith joins for the Breaking Form Interview to discuss her new book of prose about poetry, Fear Less.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: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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Language of Survival
Sometimes poetry is a shield.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 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, 1971Ethna 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, 1998Julia 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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National Book Awards 2025
The ladies break out the poetry crystal ball and predict the winner of the 2025 National Book Award for 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.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/
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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