Go tell it on the mountain, darlings! Join the queens for a special Breaking Form report on the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

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

If you don't know about Absolutely Fabulous, which first ran from 1992-95, you're missing out. Catch Edina and Patsy's best moments here.

Mona van Duyn taught at Bread Loaf at least once--according to this poster.

Check out audio recordings of Bread Loaf readings and lectures here. I can also recommend the reading by Adrian Matejka & Paul Lisicky, both of whom read from work about celebrity icons (it was like a class on how to do that well).

The t-slur has been recognized as an offensive slur for at least 10 years, if not more, as this Advocate article about the slur indicates.

Daniel Mendelsohn's review ("A Striptease Among Pals") of Hana Yanagihara's A Little Life can be read here (sorry about the paywall!) and the whole dustup gets further press in this Guardian article.

For more information about and to apply to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences (there are other conferences in environmental writing and in translation), visit their website here.

Join the queens for this last poetry salon, where we highlight fabulous poets we haven't discussed much on the show.

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.

Settle in for this fourth poetry salon, a show as jam-packed with radiant pleasure as a dark room in Rehoboth.

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.

This Summer Salon has zero tan-lines and a ton of fabulous 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.

Who wears short shorts? Celebrate summer with the queens as we read poets we haven't focused on before.

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.

The Breaking Form girls are taking a little August break, but we still want to brighten your summer with poems!

Spill all the tea but spill it slant with the Breaking Form queens in this episode dedicated to the art of secrets.

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

Cougar Town is an American television sitcom that ran for six seasons, from 2009 to 2015. See the best moment of Laurie Keller (played by Busy Phillips) here.

The music journalist Hugh McIntyre is indeed gay.

Patsy Stone's full name is: Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone. See some of her best moments from Absolutely Fabulous here.

Read Lucille Clifton's "Lost Baby Poem"

Read Nomi Stone's poems "La Ghriba (“The Stranger”) Tells How and Why," "Waiting for Happiness," and "Archiving What We Saw"

Read Ruth Stone's "Speculation," "Shapes," and "As Real As Life"

Read Bianca Stone's "Cutting Odette's Fingernails,"Marcus Aurelius," and "The Request of the Doe"

Aaron and James revisit an iconic poem about queer duty and erasure by Essex Hemphill.

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

Read Hemphill's biographical sketch on the Poetry Foundation.

We reference Hemphill's canonical poem, which you can read: "American Wedding" (listen to Justin Smith read the poem here).

Hemphill's Ceremonies was published by Cleis Press in 1992.

Hit the 1:04 mark on this clip to hear Hemphill read a poem as part of Tongues Untied.

Hemphill took part in a panel during the Black Nations/Queer Nations Conference in the early 90s alongside Samuel R. Delaney and Coco Fusco. His talk is about HIV, Blackness, and queerness.