John’s related banter…
Good morning, Hank.
It’s Tuesday, March 26th, 2013, also known as spring. You know, spring…(quotes William Shakespeare, from Love’s Labour’s Lost)
Spring, (quotes William Blake, To Spring)
Spring, which is like a woman who says, (quotes Carl Sandburg, Three Spring Notations on Bipeds)
Spring, when (quotes A. E. Housman, Spring Morning)
(Quotes Emily Dickinson, A Light exists in Spring) Where is this light, Emily Dickinson? Is it down there with the snow? Is it up there in the grey sky of doom? Because that looks exactly like the winter light!
Hank, when the Yeti [John’s in-video nickname for his wife, Sarah Urist Green] and I first moved to Indianapolis, we dropped off the moving van at the U-Haul place, and the guy was like, “Welcome to Indianapolis!”
And I said, “How long have you lived here?” And he said, “Oh, about 30 years.” And I said, “Well, what do you think of it?” And after a second, he said, “Well, you gotta live somewhere.” I think that’s probably how a lot of people feel about their hometowns, but I’ve really come to love Indianapolis, even in… the spring snow.
It’s an unpretentious city of hidden beauty, which is by far my favorite kind of beauty, and it’s lovely, even in winter. But I am ready, Hank, I am ready for spring. Hank, the calendar has made me a promise that outside has failed to keep, stupid outside, always ruining everything.
So Hank, I don’t actually believe that magical thinking works or anything, but I thought for today’s video I would share my favorite poem about spring in the hopes that like spring will like happen.
I also love this poem because it reminds us that poetry is partly in the business of getting us to try to pay attention. It’s by e. e. cummings.
You gotta live somewhere, Hank, but you also get to live to somewhere. So brace yourself, my friends, spring is coming.
Hank, I’ll you on Friday.
vlogbrothers | A Poem for Spring
(Unquoted opening)
THE DOWN drop of the blackbird,
The wing catch of arrested flight,
The stop midway and then off: off for triangles, circles, loops of new hieroglyphs-
This is April’s way:
a woman:
‘O yes, I’m here again and your heart
knows I was coming.’
(Unquoted remainder)
White pigeons rush at the sun,
A marathon of wing feats is on:
‘Who most loves danger? Who most loves wings? Who somersaults for God’s sake in the name of wing power in the sun and blue on an April Thursday.’
So ten winged heads, ten winged feet, race their white forms over Elmhurst.
They go fast: once the ten together were a feather of foam bubble, a chrysanthemum whirl speaking to silver and azure.
The child is on my shoulders.
In the prairie moonlight the child’s legs hang over my shoulders.
She sits on my neck and I hear her calling me a good horse.
She slides down-and into the moon silver of a prairie stream
She throws a stone and laughs at the clug-clug.
John Green Reads Poetry 