The brothers’ related banter…
H: Do you have a short poem for us?
J: I do, it’s Philip Larkin. It was requested, it is request actually today. William requested the poem Home is so Sad By Philip Larkin. It’s a bit of depressing poem, I apologize for that, Hank. I know that you prefer the funny stuff. But this is Home is so sad By Philip Larkin.
(Reads poem)
J: Home is so Sad by Philip Larkin. Oh Home.
H: Oh.
J: It is so sad.
H: Well I guess when you take out all of the people because everything is impermanent.
J: Yeah. I guess that’s the sadness, Hank. The underlying sadness of most stories is that everything is impermanent. I was thinking today as I was writing that in a way, like, all stories are about a… Not just all stories but also all of life, but every story in one way or another is about a plucky, young hero desperately trying to escape her fate.
H: Yep.
J: And each of us is a plucky, is a is a plucky young person desperately trying to escape our fate until we become middle aged.
H: (Laughs) That’s not true, there are lots of plucky middle aged people trying to escape their fate.
J: Right I know, but the only choice is between being a plucky middle-aged person trying to escape your fate and just accepting it. (Hank laughs) Not that, not that I’m frustrated by how the writing’s going at the moment or anything.
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Click to read poem
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
John Green Reads Poetry 