Breaking Form Selects: Lynda Hull (A Summer Poetry Salon)
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What is the summer poetry salon and who are the hosts of this episode?
Welcome to Breaking Form, a podcast of poetry and culture, where we get real about queer life and art. We're your host, I'm Aaron Smith. And I'm James Allen Hall. If you're listening for the first time, we play spicy literary games. We revisit poems that we love. We serve hot takes on poetry and pobiz. We read. You to filth. We gossip. We shade. We laugh. And we are not. For everyone.
Hi, James. Welcome to Breaking Form Selects, a summer poetry salon. And for those tuning in, maybe for the first time this summer, we are picking one poet and we are going to feature four poems by them so you get a chance to really live in their work. And there won't be any fact checks this summer and their bios will be in the show notes. Who are we talking about today? We are talking about
Uh my favorite Linda, Linda Hall.
Pretty great. I don't believe that you like her more than Linda Gregg, though.
I you're right. You know I was lying. Yes. But um this is a poet whose descriptive tendency is just one of the most unmatched in contemporary poetry. I'd like to start
How does Lynda Hull’s poem “Night Waitress” open the show and what images does it evoke?
With um a poem I love called Night Waitress from her first book, Ghost Money, which is not a title I love, to be honest with you. Night waitress. Reflected in the plate glass, the pies look like clouds drifting off my shoulder. I'm telling myself my face has character, not beauty. It's my mother's Slavic face. She washed the floor on hands and knees below the black Madonna, praying to her god of sorrows and visions, who's not here tonight when I lay out the plates, small planets, the cups of moons of saucers. At this hour the men all look as if they had never had mothers. They do not see me. I bring the cups. I bring the silver. There's the man who leans over the jukebox nightly pressing the combinations of numbers.
I would not stop him if he touched me, but it's only songs of risky love he leans into. The cook sings with the jukebox a moan and sizzle into the grill. On his forehead a tattooed cross furrows, diminished when he frowns. He sings words dragged up from the bottom of his lungs. I want a song that rolls through the night like a big Cadillac, past factories to the refineries, squatting on the bay, round and shiny as the coffee cup. Sometimes when coffee cruises my mind visiting the most remote way stations, I think of my room as a calm arrival, each book and lamp in its place. The calendar on my wall predicts no disaster, only another white square waiting to be filled like the desire that fills jail cells, the old arrest that makes me stare out the window, or want to try every bar down the street.
When I walk out of here in the morning, my mouth is bitter with sleeplessness and Men surge to the factories and I'm too tired to look. Fingers grip lunchbox handles, belt buckles gleam, wind rifles my uniform, and it's not romantic when the sun unlids the end of the avenue. I'm fading in the morning's insinuations, collecting in the crevices of buildings in wrinkles, and every fault of of this frail machinery. It's wonderful.
I I love her. Yeah, she always if you I think if you're someone who who needs inspiration to write, you could read a few pages of her and then start. I'm going to read Adagio. Adagio.
Why is the poem “Adagio” from *Star Ledger* significant and how do the hosts interpret its scenes?
Across Majestic Boulevard, steam bath neons the snow to blue, and on her table a blue cup steams, a rhyme of stale cream circling its rim. Before finding the chipped case behind the mirror, she waits for morning, the way an addict must wait, a little longer, and studies the torn print on the wall, lilies blurred to water stains, a woman floating in a boat, trailing fingers in its wake. Someone rich, someone gone, maybe a countess, but She lets herself drift in the boat, warming thin, translucent hands and coffee steam. She's not a countess, only another girl from the outer burrows with a heroine habit as long as the sea routes that run up and down the coast. She's read all winter a life of heart crane, losing her place, beginning again with crane in a room by the bridge, the East River, spending himself lavishly crazy.
She spent her night circulating between piano bars and cabarets where Greek sailors drink and buy her cheap hotel champagne at ten bucks a shot before evaporating to another port on the map of Terra Incognita, the water lilies chart along her wall.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the summer poetry salon and who are the hosts of this episode?
0:00–1:33
2
How does Lynda Hull’s poem “Night Waitress” open the show and what images does it evoke?
1:33–4:22
3
Why is the poem “Adagio” from *Star Ledger* significant and how do the hosts interpret its scenes?
4:22–7:54
4
What themes emerge in the reading of “Chiffon” from *The Only World* and why do the hosts call Hull a “lucky bitch”?
7:54–11:21
5
How does “Midnight Reports” illustrate Hull’s urban landscape and lyrical voice?
11:21–13:02
6
What do the hosts say about Hull’s blend of beauty and grit in her poetry?
13:02–16:30
7
How do personal memories and cultural references shape the discussion of Hull’s work?
16:30–17:51
8
What final thoughts and recommendations do the hosts give for listeners who want to explore Lynda Hull?
17:51–19:03
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast
Breaking Form Selects: Lucie Brock-Broido (A Summer Poetry Salon)
Breaking Form Selects: Tim Dlugos (A Summer Poetry Salon)
Breaking Form Selects: Melvin Dixon (A Summer Poetry Salon)
Breaking Form Selects: Larry Levis (A Summer Poetry Salon)
Breaking Form Selects: Tommye Blount (A Summer Poetry Salon)
Dolly Pelliker (A Cherapy Episode)