In these poems, Blanco explained, television stands in as a way of engaging with larger themes like identity, companionship, and connecting with others.

“It’s not about TV,” he said. “It’s TV as an occasion to talk about something else.”

In his own piece “Afternoons as Endora,” for example, Blanco recalls seeing television — specifically, the outlandish and self-assured witch Endora from “Bewitched” — as a companion in a lonely childhood growing up gay in a hyper-masculine culture.

“Television was my best friend in a way … It was a source of comfort, it was a source of allegory, it was a source of stories I could get into,” Blanco said.

This episode of Village Voice aired on Boston Public Radio on October 1, 2018.