The queens get to the poetic essence with the help of erasure and re-envisioning.

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

NOTES:

The Nicole Sealey poem we read at the end of the episode comes from the first four pages of her book The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

We revise poems by:

Robert Bly, "The Beauty of Women"

George Herbet, "Death"

Dean Young, "Belief in Magic"

William Stafford, "Accountability"

Billy Collins, "Design"

The video we mention posted by The New Yorker was posted in April 2023 to FaceBook: "How a New Yorker Poetry Editor Selects Poems"

Watch John Travolta introduce Idina Menzel as "the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem" and then Menzel getting her good-natured revenge.

For more about the feminist practice of erasure poetry, we can recommend Erase the Patriarchy: An Anthology of Erasure Poetry.