The brothers’ banter related to this poem…
John: This is a poem by Walt Whitman. It’s designed to make Hank angry and it’s called When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.
Hank: Ehhh, you know. That didn’t make me angry. I just think that Walt Whitman could enjoy both of those things in different ways. Those are both wonderful things. I like listening to learned astronomers myself and looking at the stars in the mystical mists or whatever he said it was.
John: Well, I think it’s the–I think it’s the debate between whether there’s value to mystical experiences and whether science can damage that value. I–this is a poem where I disagree with Walt Whitman, he has a few of those, because I do believe that science only improves our, sort of, like mystical relationship with the stars. I mean, the more I know about the stars, the more kind of beautiful and massive and overwhelming they become, and that’s very close to the feeling of the mysterium tremendum, you know, that fear and awe and overwhelmedness that accompanies, kind of, experiences with the divine or with the radically other or whatever, um, but I still love the poem. It’s a funny thing–funny thing about poems, Hank, sometimes I disagree with the argument of the poem, but I find its language and rhythm so compelling that I can’t–I can’t help but like it, you know?
Hank: Yeah! Oh, absolutely. Except for the part–except for the part where I don’t really get poetry because it–well, I–actually, I like it a lot more when you’re reading it to me. I have a hard time reading poetry because it doesn’t have the normal line breaks and it’s taken me long enough to be able to read words the way that they’re normally presented that when they’re presented differently I have a very hard time with reading comprehension and I just completely lose track of what’s going on. So, I think that all poetry should be read to me by someone, but preferably John Green, if that’s an option.
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Click to read poem
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
John Green Reads Poetry 