Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast · Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall

All Tops

·41 min·2 clips

Vijay Seshadri’s poem links the JFK assassination to disappearance, memory, and "the speed of light."

All Tops begins with a comic misfire. James Allen Hall thinks Aaron Smith means poems that totally knocked them flat, and the confusion gives the episode a loose little spark. Then the premise lands. They are picking top poems by poets they love, with room for the odd side-door choice that is not sitting on the obvious shelf. Sharon Olds, Louise Glick, Lucille Clifton, Marilyn Chin, Carl Phillips, and Mark Doty all move through the opening roll call. Their heroes lean proudly toward women. The aside turns into a joke, but it also says something true about the show's loyalties. The best stretch slows way down. "The Color of Many Deer Running" gets read with the kind of care that makes everybody listen harder. Then the feeling hits. The hosts keep circling the ending, especially the gladness wrapped up with aging, fading color, motion, and animals disappearing at once. The thrill is in the exactness. They love that the poem does not catch one deer. It catches the blur made by many bodies running away. That is the craft lesson, and it lands cleanly. The conversation also turns toward David Trinidad and a car-bound poem that seems to happen inside one passing instant. Memory keeps getting in the way of the list. They try not to repeat poems already read on the show, so the picks feel personal instead of assigned. By the end, the episode gets goofy again. Season three closes with holiday wishes, a promise of season four, and the usual reminder that Breaking Form is proudly not for everyone.

As heard by us

A brisk, affectionate pass through poems the hosts clearly love.

Breaking Form keeps to its own mix of saucy literary games, queer candor, and close reading, and that balance is the main draw. James Allen Hall and Aaron Smith move fast between jokes, gossip, and poems they plainly care about, with Sharon Olds, Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton,…

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Why you'd press play

If you want a saucy poetry chat that keeps veering into desire, gossip, and real feeling, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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