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