The judgy Judies play Toss or Keep to help their friend Tommy downsize his poetry library.

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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:

Some of the poems/poets/people mentioned in this episode include:

Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man" which you can read here and listen to Creeley read here. And here's a roundtable discussion of the poem (~11 minutes, with a recording of Creeley reading it during a visit to Harvard).

The poet Ai's book, Vice. Experience a video that includes her reading her poem "The Good Shepherd" here.

Matthew Dickman, All-American Poem

Elizabeth (betsy) Cox, I Have Told You and Told You. Read more about Cox's books with Penguin/Random House here.

Loiuse Glück. "First Memory" is the last poem in Ararat. Watch this dramatic reading of the poem by Eisa Davis.

Diane Gilliam Fisher, Kettle Bottom. Read more about Fisher here.

Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake. Read the title poem here.

Bob Hicok, Words for Empty, Words for Full. Read the poem "A Primer" mentioned in the show.

James's poem "Portrait as My Mother as the Republic of Texas" appears in their first book, Now You're the Enemy (U of Arkansas, 2008). Read that poem and a short interview about it here.

Watch this shady interview conducted with Paulina Porizkova about being fired by America's Next Top Model.

The comic Beth Littlefield conducted very funny interviews forThe Daily Show in which her interviewer persona sent up Barbara Walters's interviews. In her interview of Dionne Warwick, she started one question this way:"In 1985, you participated in 'We Are the World,' which gathered together some of the top performers of our day, and Latoya Jackson." Watch Warwick fall out here, at the 2:30 mark.

The ladies get manifesto on that butt! (And mouth.)

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:

Read more about D.H. Lawrence here.

Read William Carlos Williams's "Paterson" here and "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" here.

Jericho Brown writes about A.E. Housman in Mentor to Muse here

Read Dylan Thomas's poem "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"

Here's a link to Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving But Drowning"

For more about Keith Douglas, visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/keith-douglas

Aaron tosses off a quote from "Mayakovsky" by Frank O'Hara, which you can read here.

Read Charles Olsen's "I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You"

Here's Alan Dugan's "Internal Migration: On Being on Tour"

Learn more about Judith Wright here.

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

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:

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!

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.

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!

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.

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).