Get in, gurl, we're reading poetry at your unfriendly neighborhood leather bar.

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.

NOTES:

Learn more about Tom of Finland, the artist name of Finnish Touko Laaksonen who signed his erotic work "Tom."

Follow messygayspod on Instagram, or @messygays.bsky.social on Blue Sky, or on FB at MessyGaysPod

Read Heather McHugh's "The Amenities" (care warning: sexual assault)

Read sam sax's "On PrEP or on Prayer [“when i say pre-exposure prophylaxis”]

Read Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose"

Read Diane Wakoski's "Uneasy Rider"

Here's an excerpt from Mark Bibbins's 13th Balloon

Read this poem by Tyehimba Jess

Check out Robin Coste Lewis's page on The Elders Project here. TEP captures and celebrates untold and underrepresented stories of activists, storytellers, and community builders who have witnessed and shaped great change in American public life.

Read this consideration/critique of Cruising

Read this interview of Mary Jo Bang.

Stephen King addresses rumors about Musk insults here.

Read this great review of Bianca Stone's fabulous The Mobius Strip Club of Grief.

If you haven't seen the 20th anniversary edition of Richard Siken's Crush, check it out here.

Check out Nighboat's Rob Halpern's Music for Porn

Read Jenny Johnson's essay "Butch Blow Job" in Bomb.

The queens super-gay it up with Stephanie Burt, the editor of the new poetry anthology, SUPER GAY POEMS.

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.

NOTES:

Check out SUPER GAY POEMS: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall, edited by Stephanie Burt, out on April 1, 2025.

Read Hera Lindsay Bird's "Bisexuality"

Check out Best New Zealand Poets and 20 Contemporary New Zealand Poets.

Read JD McClatchy's "My Mammogram"

The article we reference by the founders of AALR is "The World Doesn't Stop for Derek Walcott, or: An Exchange between Coeditors." Gerald Maa and Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis.

Here's a link, if you haven't listened to our episode "We Can Shift the Canon"

Vendler's final book is called Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays, out from Penguin on September 2, 2025.

Read "Breakfast with Miss Bishop"--Helen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishop.

Read here for more about Essex Hemphill.

Stephanie wrote about teaching the Taylor Swift course at Harvard for Vanity Fair.

Read Stephanie's "Taylor's Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift"

The Tay Learning Podcast that Stephanie mentions can be found here.

Read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

We're talking resistance, joy, and queer communities with Brenda Shaughnessy!

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.

NOTES:

Click here for Brenda’s Queer Resistance Playlist 2025 (Spotify).

Check out Brenda's poem "Panopticon" from Interior with Sudden Joy.

Visit Brenda Shaughnessy’s website . And hear her read from her newest book, Tanya here.

Read more about UC Santa Cruz closing the Feminist Studies Dept here.

Read more about Maria Ressa

For more about Roland Barthes’s contribution to literary criticism, read here.

While dated, here’s a list of creative writing programs that are LGBTQ+ friendly.

Read more about Bettina Aptheker

Read more about Donna J. Haraway

Read on for more about the clubs Brenda mentions: Meow Mix, Clit Club, Henrietta Hudson (still open!), Pandora's Box, and more.

Read more about Angela Davis's work here.

For more about Wendy Brown, read her Guggenheim citation here.

You can learn more about Allan Bérubé here.

Learn more about the incredible Urvashi Vaid here.

Watch/listen to Cécile McLorin Salvant's "Until" here.

Read more about Kate Clinton on her website here.

For more about Teresa de Lauretis, click here.