Beginnings

Explicit content warning

04/18/22 • 25 min

Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Join the queens as they go spelunking in some of their favorite openings.
You can buy books mentioned in the show at Loyalty Books, a Black-owned indie bookstore in Washington, Dc.
Watch Louise Glück read "The Wild Iris" here (~2 min)

A terrific interview between Glück and Peter Streckfus can be found here (they also read together; scroll down for that) (~30 min)

Watch Hanif Abdurraqib read from A Fortune for Your Disaster here (~10 min)

Olena Kalytiak Davis "A Few Words for the Visitor in the Parlor" from And Her Soul Out of Nothing. You can watch Eloisa Amezcua read "The Unbosoming" from OKD's 2nd book, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities. (~3 min)

Watch Jane Mead give a reading at Texas State U here, which begins with the poem Aaron mentions, "Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make" from The Lord and the General Din of the World, here (~40 min)

Listen to Brigit Pegeen Kelly read "Dead Doe" from Song here

Watch an interview with (with interspersed readings by) Irene McKinney here (~25 min). A longer celebration of Dr. McKinney was recorded in 2013, and you can watch that here (~1 hour)

Watch Diane Seuss read from Frank: sonnets, including the opening poem here (~20 min).

You can read an interview with Reginald Shepherd here.

Watch Shane McCrae read Brock-Broido's "Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements" here (~5 min)

Nicanor Parra reads "Hombre Imaginario" to an adoring crowd here (~3 min),

Watch Eduardo C. Corral read at the 2021 Sewanee Writers' Conference (with Arhm Choi Wild; ~30 min total) here. You can view Tino Rodriguez's piece Our Completion: oil on wood 5"x7" here (note: directs to artist's website; piece has a different title there).

A terrific interview between Glück and Peter Streckfus can be found here (they also read together; scroll down for that) (~30 min)

Watch Hanif Abdurraqib read from A Fortune for Your Disaster here (~10 min)

Listen to Brigit Pegeen Kelly read "Dead Doe" from Song here

Watch an interview with (with interspersed readings by) Irene McKinney here (~25 min). A longer celebration of Dr. McKinney was recorded in 2013, and you can watch that here (~1 hour)

Watch Diane Seuss read from Frank: sonnets, including the opening poem here (~20 min).

You can read an interview with Reginald Shepherd here.

Watch Shane McCrae read Brock-Broido's "Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements" here (~5 min)

Nicanor Parra reads "Hombre Imaginario" to an adoring crowd here (~3 min),

Previous Episode

F*CKFACE

Aaron challenges James to a game of "Elaine Equi or Elaine Benis"; then the boys see what happens when we add one small word to a line of poetry.
Learn more about Elaine Equi's Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems here.

Elaine Equi was nominated for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize International. See her read here.

Read Baudelaire's "Destruction" here.
Learn more about Sappho here.

Mock Orange: Hear Louise Gluck (Taurus 4/22) read it here.
Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Desire" here.

Read Jericho Brown on the form he invented, the duplex, here.

Natasha Trethewey's third book of poetry is Native Guard. You can buy Trethewey's memoir Memorial Drive -- as well as any books authored by the genius writers we've mentioned on today's episode -- can be purchased from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC.

Next Episode

We Were the Ones (interview w/ Denise Duhamel pt. 1)

The queens ask Denise Duhamel's superhero poet origin story in Part One of their interview.

Buy Denise's books at Loyalty Bookstore, a DC-area Black-owned bookstore.

Denise Duhamel was a sociology major in undergrad. Her most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald ; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). Her collaboration with Julie Marie Wade, The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, was published by Noctuary Press in 2019. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the guest editor is for The Best American Poetry 2013.

Dangerous Diane is also known as DANGEROUS DIANE SPODAREK. Her website is: http://dangerousdiane.blogspot.com. She also has an MFA, from Eastern Michigan in video & performance.

Bob Flanagan and David Trinidad published A TASTE OF HONE with Cold Calm Press, 1990.

If you don't know what a gay bear is, think: dad bod-burly, hirsute, lumberjack vibes, though of course there are lots of different kind of bears, including femme bears, polar bears, and younger bears, called cubs. If you want to know more about gay taxonomy, visit my Instagram.
You can listen to the pronunciation of Orchises Press here.

Click here to read more about Bill Knott, and here to see a poem of his set to video and music (~1 min).
Click here to read more about Michael Burkard.

Click here to read Lyn Lifshin's poem "The Fathers." You can see her give a reading here (~2 min).