Welcome to Melody or Witchcraft where contemporary poets engage with Dickinson and today’s world. I’m your host, Kathryn Petruccelli, a poet, workshop leader, Substacker, & former guide for the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. I’m interested in sources of creative inspiration, how the past influences the present, challenging cultural norms, social justice, and poetry as a tool for survival. I have yet to fail to fall further in love with each poet-guest after our conversations. I hope that will be true for you, too.
Non-poets & poetry skeptics: you are very welcome here!! Names or poetic references are fleshed out or linked to in the show notes if not in the moment.
Things you are at risk of as a listener:
Learning new ways to understand poetry.
Filling up your “new writers/books to read” dance card.
Finding healing and companionship around the stress of living.
EXPLICIT LANGUAGE NOTE:
Please be aware that there is a curse word in Episode 16 as well as reference to a slur for gay people.
kathrynpetruccelli.substack.com for complete notes, photos, and links.
Thanks for being a listener! Rate us on Spotify HERE, or Apple Podcasts HERE.
In Episode 16, James & I romp through a conversation that touches on multiplicity, queer Dickinson, Mario Lopez, and the dangers and portals of erasure.
In addition to the following full-length interview, look for the James Allen Hall “bonus bit” episode, where James talks about breaking past plateaus in writings and you get to be a fly on the wall while we chat current reads and recs.
James Allen Hall is the author of two books of poetry and a book of lyric memoir, most recently Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books. With the poet Aaron Smith, they cohost Breaking Form: A Poetry & Culture Podcast.
James’ choice of Dickinson poem:
One need not be a chamber—to be Haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing
Material Place—
Far safer of a Midnight—meeting
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—
Far safer, through an Abbey—gallop—
The Stones a’chase—
Than moonless—One’s A’self encounter—
In lonesome place—
Ourself—behind Ourself—Concealed—
Should startle—most—
Assassin—hid in Our Apartment—
Be Horror’s least—
The Prudent—carries a Revolver—
He bolts the Door,
O’erlooking a Superior Spectre
More near—Fascicle 20, Sheet 4, c. autumn 1862 (Fr407; J670)
Early English History
James Allen HallWas too early: 8am Tuesday/Thursday, Elizabeth Hall.
I slouched half-asleep, first-rowed, demarcated
from the frat boys sitting in back so they could see
up the professor’s skirt. In the mead hall after,
they surrounded, let me close if I shared my notes.
I was in love with the black-haired outfielder,
his backwards Braves cap, until he called me fag
for refusing to rate our teacher’s underwear.
I didn’t know how to fight back. I learned that semester
about the rebel queen Boudica, whose revolt razed
three Roman forts and the emperor’s temple.
Tacitus provides motive: her husband dead, kingdom
annexed, Boudica flogged, her daughters raped.
The armies she led tortured its captives
but he doesn’t say why. Some pain is negligible;
its survival cancels the wound of its birth.
Most accounts say she poisoned herself,
facing defeat. Cassius Dio gives her longer:
secreted away to the south, living unrecorded
for years with her daughters. The boys in my class
drew stick figures fucking on the wall by my room
after I came out. I woke at night to wash out
the crooked glyphs, the caption proclaiming
“AIDES kills faggs dead.” I scrubbed until
what remained was fist-sized, vague and pink,
a map of the possible world. Our final project
was to cook an authentic English banquet,
eaten family-style at the professor’s house.
At the appointed time in the year of our lord,
I came with dessert but did not see the moat
she’d installed in her foyer. The strawberry pudding
flew like an arrow, pink spurting everywhere,
especially across the faces of those boys whose names
were lost the moment I joined an insurrection
begun in AD 61 by a dissident queen. In the years
since my disappearance, I have cemented
my escarpments, foddered my canon, sewn up
my flag. I am painting my face, bluing my body
with woad. Warn them. I am coming
to punish my Romans.
Camille Dungy’s Melody or Witchcraft episode
Apple TV’s three-season series “Dickinson”
Alena Smith (creator of “Dickinson”)
The Slave is Gone podcast with Jericho Brown and Breonne Janae
Joan Jett’s “One Way or Another” is somewhere in this live concert from 2016. Rabbit hole, anyone?
Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”
“The Gay 90s” episode of Breaking Form
Sharon Olds’ poem “Satan Says”
The musical “Rent” (debuted on Broadway in 1996)
Larry Levis’ Swirl & Vortex - Collected Poems
Brenda Hillman (Melody or Witchcraft episode featuring Brenda coming August 24th!)
Thanks for listening! Have a comment you can leave??
Recorded May 19, 2026
