The queens talk poetry through the lyrics of our diva & icon: Cher, who'll turn 77 on May 20.

Review Breaking Form on Apple Podcasts here. 

Please support Breaking Form and buy Aaron's and James's  books:
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Cher appeared twice on the show Will & Grace — once in 2000, when Jack mistook her for a drag-queen Cher impersonator, and again in an appearance in 2002's season 4 finale, where she advises Jack" "Follow your bliss."

Matthew Dickman's poem "Slow Dance" appears in his book All-American Poem, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award. The poem first appeard in The Missouri Review (Volume 29, Number 3, Fall 2006). Read it here. Or watch a video of the poet reading the poem here.

Hear Ann Lauterbachtalk about sound, performance, and folk music through this reading at U Penn's PennSound archive.

Justin Torres does say he learned a lot from reading poetry and says he loves condensed short stories in this illuminating interview.

Read Sharon Olds's poem "I Go Back to May 1937" first published in her 2nd book, The Gold Cell (1987), here. You can hear a recording of Olds reading that poem here.

Watch the SNL sketch with Molly Shannon, "Sally O'Malley's Rockette Open Audition," here.

You can read Christine Garren's title poem "Among the Monarchs" here.

Find Anne Sexton's "Music Swims Back to Me" here. And read more about Hugh Priesthood's inspiration drawn from that poem for his "The Song Remembers When," recorded by Trisha Yearwood.

Aaron referenced the Sexton poem "How We Danced," in which the speaker's father has an erection as they dance together.