Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

All the queens want is boundless love in this episode about the love life of Frank O'Hara.
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.

The queens talk about writing through sadness and grief in order to move forward and gain a different vantage point. 
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).

Dress shopping is cardio & life for the Breaking Form fashionistas. 

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).

Get set for a poetry gabfest for the ages! The fabulous Joy Priest joins us for the Breaking Form Interview.

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"

The queens kindly request your presence for some piping hot tea as they recap the AWP Conference in Baltimore. 
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.