Are you a friend of Dorothy? This episode pays tribute to The Golden Girls, but in the most Breaking Form way possible!

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

SHOW NOTES

Christian Wiman's book Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. It's part memoir and part a collection of his poems and poems by others related to the book's themes. Hear Wiman interviewed on Fresh Air

Read Brenda Shaughnessy's "Panopticon" first published in Ecotone.

Read Aaron Smith's poem "Blue Exits" (about self-harming and self-exiting)

A gay couple had an epic, viral meltdown in an airport. If you haven't seen the original TikTok go "Remember Them: Shelby and Dolly"

We reference Dana Levin's fourth book, Banana Palace. Read the title poem.

Read Erin Belieu's poem "Erections"

On your knees with the queens in the poetry darkroom, poetic pleasures await! Then we wipe off our kneecaps before hitting the Pride Parade.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

NOTES

Tess Gallagher's "Stopping Place" is from her book Willingly.

Donna Stonecipher's "Inlay 18 (Sei Shõnagun)" is from her book The Cosmopolitan. Read a bit about the book here.

Sei Shōnagon's actual given name is not known. It was the custom among aristocrats in those days to call a court lady by a nickname taken from a court office belonging to her father or husband. Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book.

The Dick Dock in Provincetown is so popular it has its own Facebook page. Or check out this Youtube video called "Provincetown's Dick Dock: Making Gay Sex Magic!"

If you want to know more about the history of the Meat Rack on Fire Island, here's a good starting place.

Read Ocean Vuong's poem "Theology"

Marilyn Nelson's "For Mary, Fourth Month" is available in her The Fields of Praise: New and Selected.

Jim Powell did indeed win a MacArthur in 1993. Read more poems by Powell here.

Read Frank Stanford's "Blue Yodel of the Desperado"

Read more about Osip Mandelstam

Kevin Prufer's book of poems The Fears won the Rilke Prize. Read the judges' citation here.

Visit Michelle Tea's website here. Or read an excerpt from her poem "I Used to Be Straight" here (scroll down).

Read Franny Choi's "Unlove Poem"

Read "Prayer/Oracion" by Francisco X. Alarcón, trans. Francisco Aragón

Read "American Wedding" by Essex Hemphill

Here's June Jordan's fiery "Poem About My Rights"

You can read torrin a. greathouse's "Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs" here.

We're snatching wigs in this one! The queens get real about bad poetry.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

NOTES

Watch the official lyric video for "But Daddy I Love Him" and read this article about what the pub The Black Dog (the titular pub from the Taylor Swift Song) s like.

Read Mona van Dun's minimalist sonnet "Closure" here.

If you hate your eyeballs and poetry, go read Helen Steiner Rice's "It Takes the Bitter and the Sweet" and her foundation's website.

The article Aaron talks about is Vice's "Bad Poetry is Everywhere," which quotes Yasmin Belkhyr. It includes links to the receipts about the poet we note has been alleged to have plagiarized--and here's the Daily Beast article about that poet too.

Javier O. Huerta in an essay for the Poetry Foundation named a few good bad poems, including Elizabeth Bishop's "Casabianca"

Here is the first sonnet from Sonnets From the Portuguese.

Read Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar"

Marie Howe's "What the Living Do" is the title poem from her 2nd collection. You can watch her read the poem here.

A leading ladies game leads to a tombstone-poetry pop quiz before Monica Farrell reads a poem by Michael Dumanis. Happy Pride Month!

Watch Anne Sexton respond to a vile review (published in The Southern Review) of Live or Die. Read "Menstruation at Forty" from Live or Die. Read "Rapunzel" from Sexton's Transformations.

On Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, appearing with Natalie Portman to promote May December, Julianne Moore names her performance in Far From Heaven as her "personal best performance." On another episode, Moore talks about being fired from CanYou Every Forgive Me? by Nicole Holofcener. Here's the receipts for why.

It's not just Aaron who doesn't think of Moonstruck as romantic comedy.

Read "The Wicked Candor of Wanda Coleman."

Read this terrific appreciation of Kathy Acker in The LA Review of Books.

Here's the New Yorker profile in which Judith Butler tells the story of her job interview at Williams in the late 1980s.

James Wright's first book The Green Wall won the Yale Younger in 1957 (chosen by Auden) and is full of formal verse. Compare "On the Skeleton of a Hound" (from The Green Wall) with "A Blessing" (from his 3rd book, The Branch Will Not Break).

Kim Addonizio's poem "What Women Want" is the poem James was thinking about. It was first published in Tell Me.

You can buy Diannely Antigua's new book Good Monster, just out from Copper Canyon Press.

The epitaph on Auden's grave is from his poem "In Memory of WB Yeats," which you can listen to Auden reading here.

Read Dorothy Parker's "Interview."

Watch this intro to the project at Canterbury Christchurch University's celebrating Aphra Behn. Read her poem "Love Armed."

The epitaph on Kenyon's and Hall's tombstone is from her poem "Afternoon at MacDowell"

At the end of the episode, Monica Ferrell reads Michael Dumanis's poem "East Liverpool, Ohio" from his new book Creature. Read a conversation with Michael in Adroit here.

The queens revisit some early, inspiring books of poetry that still slap! Come nerd out with us.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Read Linda Gregg's "Part of Me Wanting Everything to Live"

Read an interview with Wayne Koestenbaum, "Dirty Mind: An Interview with WK" which appeared in LA Review of Books

Read "Boy at the Patterson Falls" from Toi Derricotte's Captivity.

Listen to Susan Mitchell read "A Rainbow" -- the fun starts around 11:08. It includes her singing in German….

Read Cathy Song's "Ikebana" from Picture Bride, which won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets and was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

Listen to Cornelius Eady read some poems from Brutal Imagination (including "How I Got Born") and talk about Susan Smith here (forward to 23:50 mark). You can read the text of "How I Got Born" here (scroll down and click title to expand the whole poem). Eady turned the poems into a play of the same name; you can listen to Eady in conversation with Joe Morton about that process here (~47 min).

Break out the croquet for a game of poets named Heather before the queens talk poetry inspired by the movie Heathers. No, Heather, it's Heather's turn!

Please support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

When she released her 2nd book of poems, TheTrees The Trees, Heather Christle set up a phone number which people could call to have her read a poem to them. The number was (413) 570-3077. You can read more about that endeavor here and here.

You can read Heather McHugh's poem "I Knew I’d Sing," listen to McHugh read it, or watch Mary Karr discuss it.

Read McHugh's ars poetica "What He Thought" or click here to listen to her read it (at the 30:45 mark).

Find out more about the singer Conan Gray.

Watch here the clip of the father eulogizing his son at the funeral for Jake and Ram.

Check out Dustin Brookshire's poem "If Dolly Parton Had Been My Mother" And then check out the magazine Dustin edits, Limp Wrist.

Read GC Waldrep's poem "What Is a Soprano"

Read Frank Bidart's "Herbert White"

Check out a lunchtime poll in Heathers.

Watch the official video for P!nk's song "Trustfall"

The queens blur the boundaries between Dylan Thomas James, then become shady ladies about Broetry.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Read Dylan Thomas's incredible villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" or listen to Thomas read it here. We reference a few readings of this poem by actors:
Here's Anthony Hopkins getting choked up reading it.
And here's Michael Sheen's rendition.

Listen to Thomas read "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London." You can read the text of the poem here.

Read Dylan Thomas's "The Girl's Story"

Watch a short (30 min) Dylan Thomas documentary here.

Read Dylan Thomas's poems "Once Below a Time" and "Where Once the Waters of Your Face"

Read Thomas James's poem "Dragging the Lake" and his poem "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh"

Read another pair of Thomas James poems: "Reasons" and "Waking Up"

Check out this FABULOUS Lucie Brock-Broido's essay on Thomas James: "The Rebirth of a Suicidal Genius"

The art of losing isn't hard to master in this episode devoted to the loves and losses of Elizabeth Bishop's life.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Buy our books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Read Bishop's villanelle (the only one she ever published!) "One Art." Read about her drafting process (at least 16 versions) here.

You can listen to Bishop read a few of her poems, including "In the Waiting Room" here--recorded at the 92nd Street Y in October 1977. And here's a much younger Bishop reading "The Fish."

Bishop's Paris Review interview is absolute gold.

For more on Lota and Samambaia, the house she built north of Rio, read this Paris Review article on two recent movies made about Bishop and Lota.

Other receipts for what we say in the show are found in this New York Times article, "The Love of Her Life"

For more about the acrimonious "war of the legal wills" between Bishop and Macedo Soares, I recommend David Hoak's article "Proofs of Love: The Last Letters of Lota de Macedo Soares," published in PN Review Volume 42 Number 2 (Nov-Dec 2015). The link contains a paywall.

See more photographs of Samambaia, the glass butterfly-shaped house Lota built in Petrópolis.

Here are the receipts about Judy Flynn.

Receipts for the Louise Crane-Billie Holiday tryst are here and here.

Read "The Loneliness of Elizabeth Bishop" in The Nation.

Crusoe in England" was a coded coping with grief over Soares' death. when the repatriated Robinson Crusoe recalls the loss of “Friday, my dear Friday,” who “died of measles / seventeen years ago come March.” Had Soares lived to one more March birthday, the couple would have spent seventeen years together. You can hear Bishop read (and follow along the text of) "Crusoe in England" here.