Crimes Against Diction

Explicit content warning

06/19/23 • 25 min

1 Listener

Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

The queens talk diction, the political history of language, and naked octogenarians.
Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form 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.
Words that we identify as "forbidden" (in case you want to try to write poem/s with them!): verboten; beautiful; the body; dick; cicada; bougainvillea; filament; "Z was all X"; Dear Reader"; dead deer; soul; panties.
You can hear Plath read her poem “Lady Lazarus” here.
You can read James's poem "Portrait of My Mother as Rosemary Woodhouse" here.
Read CP Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka” (translated by Edmund Keeley) here.
Aaron references an article he's read about why the word "panties" is objectionably sexist. And while it may not be this one from The Atlantic, it's still an awesome read. The author, Sarah Fentem, writes: "I've heard several people refer to the word as "infantilizing." The addition of the suffix "-ies" (or in the singular form, "-y") converts the word into a diminutive. Literally: "little pants." .... In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of "panties" is from a 1908 set of instructions for making doll clothes." Read the rest of the article here.

Previous Episode

Banned Books

The ladies express what they've got whether you're ready or not in this episode about banned poetry.

Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form 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 more of the Judy Blume NPR interview on banning books.
To read more about Amanda Gorman’s poem being banned, click here. If you’d like to read more about Daily Salinas, the person who formally complained about Gorman’s poem, who is reported to have links to Proud Boys, go here.

Here and here are the receipts regarding Jericho Brown's rescinded invitation to visit to the Community School of Naples in February 2022.
Matthew Zapruder’s suicide poem was published as the April 18, 2023 Poem-a-Day.
For more about banned poets, visit the website we use from the Academy of American Poets.

On the Golden Girls, Blanche's sister, Charmaine, writes a book called Vixen: Story of a Woman. Check out Blanche’s reaction to it here. We also mention the existence of a few Golden Girls episodes centering on Blanche’s relationship with her gay brother, Clay. Check out a clip of one of those here.
You can see 4 incredible, short interviews with Reinaldo Arenas (~19 mins) here.

Next Episode

Shimmering Terror (with Guest Randall Mann)

1 Recommendations

The queens are joined by Randall Mann to discuss discomfort, cage-dancing, and how to deal.

Support Breaking Form, if the spirit so moves you:
Review Breaking Form 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.
Randall Mann is the author most recently of DEAL: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2023). Read a review of the book published here in On the Seawall. And buy the book from Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned indie bookseller, here.
Randy mentions his poem "In the Beginning" which has an epigraph from Laura Jensen. You can read that poem, and a few others, online here.
Laura Jensen is the author of 3 books. Carnegie Mellon republished her second book, Memory, in 2006. You can read her poem "Heavy Snowfall in a Year Gone Past" here. And check out this reconsideration of Memory in The Rumpus here.
Check out this essay on Gwendolyn Brooks's formalism and her literary reputation by A. Van Jordan on the Best American Poetry blog here.
Read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" here, or watch John Murillo read the poem here.
North of Boston is Robert Frost's second book of poems. It contains 17 poems, including "Mending Wall" and "The Death of the Hired Man.
You can read the Marianne Moore poem "What Are Years" along with an essay by Annie Finch here. Or you can watch the poem read by Robert Pinsky.