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

The Dating Game

·30 min·2 clips

Joe Wenderoth’s Wendy’s poem puts a Frosty, a bathroom floor, and “the real test of a drink’s thickness” in one scene.

The tape starts loose. James and Aaron greet first-timers with the show's usual blend of poetry, queer life, gossip, laughter, and a clear warning that this may not be for everyone. Then AI wanders in and gets mocked. A large language model joke becomes a slim language model joke, because literary culture was never going to enter politely. Aaron admits the writing is not landing, and the bad-poem confession gives the conversation a small bruise while the banter keeps throwing sparks around it. Then the game takes over. The excerpt catches them mid-turn, somehow moving from Go-Go Boys to Battery Park like that commute makes sense. The Statue of Liberty becomes a monster. It is goofy, a little apocalyptic, and very much France's problem. Then Lee Young Lee arrives. His poem "This Room and Everything in It" is the game's inspiration, and the read-aloud stanza changes the room. One host hears family first, then feels the poem slide toward desire and a beloved, which is exactly the kind of close-reading pivot this show likes best. Memory gets personal after that. A New Year's Eve cuddle with someone he barely knew becomes the imagined place to read the poem: in bed, after the other person leaves. The moment gets tender, then immediately ridiculous. The underwear detail pulls it out of soft-focus reverence and back into the show's messier idea of intimacy. Peanut butter whiskey stays nearby. Someone wonders whether the recording is too much to air, and James makes it clear that airing it was never really in question. The close turns darker. Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour, Ian McDonald, and the Dating Game killer arrive as one last culture turn before the review, books, Instagram, Blue Sky, and goodbye business. The point holds: poetry can survive jokes, bad drafts, desire, dramatic readings, and the odd little afterimages people leave in their beds.

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