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Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

By: Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall
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James Allen Hall and Aaron Smith talk about their favorite poems and poets, interview amazing writers, laugh a lot, gossip, and get real about life and art.© 2025 Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast Art Entertainment & Performing Arts Literary History & Criticism
Episodes
  • The Dating Game
    Oct 6 2025

    The queens select some very poetic bachelors and decide where they'd read them on their date.

    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:

    Poets and poems mentioned include:

    "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton

    Joe Wenderoth's book, Letters to Wendy, "June 3, 1997"

    Li-Young Lee, "This Room and Everything In It"

    Frank O'Hara, "Having a Coke with You"

    Carolina Ebeid, "Reading Celan in a Subway Station"

    Raymond Antrobus, "Echo"

    "Why Whales Are Back in New York City" by Rajiv Mohabir

    Arthur Sze, "At the Equinox"

    Jim Whiteside, "Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature"

    Ari Banias, "The Feeling"

    Steven Duong, "Ho Chi Minh City"

    "Offerings Iphis Pledged as a Girl and Paid as a Boy" by Oliver Baez Bendorf

    James Ciano, “Coney Island Baby”

    Oak Morse, "A Portrait of Black Man Wrestling with His Secret Self (or, an inner cosplay ode to the singer Brandy"

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    30 mins
  • Aaron and James Went to Pittsburgh
    Sep 29 2025

    The queens descend upon Pittsburgh for a bittersweet (but dishy) tribute for Ed Ochester (1939-2023).

    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:

    For more about the weekend events and about Ed Ochester's impact on American poetry, read here and here and here.

    The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press as part of the Pitt Poetry Series. Submissions are accepted March 1--April 30.

    For more about Southern Methodist University's Project Poetica, read here.

    Read more about the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature here.

    Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and (as he says on his website) "professional Black person." He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas—coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post and recently acquired by Univision and Gizmodo Media Group to be a vertical of The Root—and a columnist for GQ. Visit his website at https://www.damonjyoung.com

    According to CruisingGays.com, the Cathedral of Learning's 2nd and 8th floor bathrooms were popular cruising spots.

    The International Poetry Forum launched in 1966 with a reading that featured Archibald MacLeish. Since then, alumni of the series include nine Nobel Laureates, 14 Academy Award recipients, 28 U.S. Poets Laureate, 39 National Book Award winners, and 47 Pulitzer Prize winners.

    Joy Priest is the author of HORSEPOWER (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). Visit her website here.

    Check out Pittsburgh's City of Asylum here: https://cityofasylum.org

    Monroeville is about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. Read Ed's poem titled "Monroeville"; several others can be found online at the Poetry Foundation here.

    Thanks to Nancy Krygowski and Jeffrey McDaniel and Terrance Hayes for putting together an incredible, moving weekend to a brilliant editor, mentor, and friend. We miss you, Ed.

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    33 mins
  • Pairings
    Sep 22 2025

    The ladies pair poets together that prove complementary--or contrarian!

    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 Gary Jackson's website.

    In this interview, Marie Howe talks a bit about Lucille Clifton and feminist poetry.

    You can listen here to Carl Phillips read and engage in conversation after with Lia Purpura at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in February 2021.

    Read this great, short essay by Carl Phillips on Linda Gregg.

    Read Irene McKinney's poem "The Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson"

    Visit Jehanne Dubrow online at https://jehannedubrow.com

    Rebecca Lindenberg's website is https://www.rebeccalindenberg.com. Read "Catalogue of Ephemera."

    Visit Erika Meitner's website. And read her poem "Jesus is the Reason."

    You can watch Ange Minko read her villanelle "Escape Architecture" or read it here.

    Essex Hemphill's new and selected is called Love Is a Dangerous Word.

    Finally, Charlie Sheen does indeed identify as bisexual, and apparently there is a lot of ick in the new Netflix documentary about him.

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    34 mins
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