John Green Reads Poetry

J: Hank, I almost feel like we should move on to the short poem for the day because it’s been so so dark.

H: Sure, I mean is it gonna be less dark?

J: It is, it is. Now Hank, as you know, Richard Wright is one of my favorite writers, great American novelist, but he was also an author of haiku. In fact, he wrote more than 4,000 haikus in his life. If we wanted to, we could have a short poem every podcast for the next what, I don’t know, 40 years with nothing but Richard Wright poems. But I’m just gonna read you one instead of reading you all 4,000 of them. It’s a nice early spring poem. “An apple blossom, trembling on a sunlit branch, from the weight of bees” It’s haiku number 78 by Richard Wright.

H: Well John, we could have a Richard Wright– If we do a Dear Hank & John every week for the next 76 years, we will still have Richard Wright haikus.

J: I’ll tell you my biggest concern about that, is that one or both of us is almost certain to be deceased in 76 years. Don’t you think so?

H: You think?

J: Oh yeah.

H: You think we’re gonna die?

J: No no no, I think– I know we’re gonna die. I think we’re gonna die within the next 76 years.

H: No I’m gonna say both of us are gonna be dead in 76 years.

J: I would only be 115.

H: Uhh huh.

J: That is on the far end…

H: That is on the far end… that is on the outside of the bell curve.

J: … that’s on the far edge of the likely curve (laughs).

H: The far outside of that wave. And you know at 115 you’re riding that down the nether regions of the bell curve there, thinking things are okay. Like that woman who did that dance with President Obama. Nobody was happier than her ever in the world.

J: That’s true, but I think she was only 104 so she’s 11 years short of being able to get through all of Richard Wright’s haikus.

H: You forget how much time, like, you get to be 70 and you’re like “well, at any moment now” really, and then 90 is like 20 years from that. Imagine all the stuff you get done between when you’re 0 and 20. You just get to do all that over again.

J: Right, but in reverse order. So instead of, you know, getting potty trained, you find yourself… yeah.

H: And suddenly you have to have caregivers again.

J: Oh boy. We’ve gone all the way into the darkness, and what I wanted to do was read a nice little spring haiku about bees so that I could start off with a question from a listener about bees.

H: Okay, let’s talk about bees.

An apple blossom
Trembling on a sunlit branch
From the weight of bees.