Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast

Breaking Form Selects: Melvin Dixon (A Summer Poetry Salon)

Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall Season 4 Episode 28

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0:00 | 14:36

Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Melvin Dixon.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 


 Notes:

Scholar, novelist, and poet Melvin Dixon was born in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA and a PhD from Brown University. His poetry collections include: Change of Territory (1983) and Love’s Instruments (1995, published posthumously. He's the author of two novels, Trouble the Water (1989) and Vanishing Rooms (1991). 

Read Dixon's most-anthologized poem "Heartbeats" Watch Danez Smith read the poem here. 

CM Burroughs is joined by Adrian Metejka on this panel celebrating Melvin Dixon's work. Watch here (~30 min). CM Burroughs reads her essay published in Poetry Magazine, the text of which is here: "Poetic Kin: Meeting Melvin Dixon"

Read "Looking Back: The AIDS Epidemic" for a bit more about the AIDS pandemic.


Poems we read include:

"Turning 40 in the Nineties"

"Change of Territory

"The 80s Miracle Diet"

"One by One"

"I'll Be Somewhere Listening for My Name"