John Green Reads Poetry

J: Would you like a short poem for the day?  

H: Yeah, tell me all about it.  

J: I thought I’d read you another haiku by Richard Wright. I liked the last Richard Wright haiku so much and I like this one so much. Written right at the end of his life, when he was living in exile in Paris, he wrote:

(Reads haiku)

H: Oh yes, yeah. I liked it.

J: Just one little beautiful haiku at the end of life. 

H: That was great. High quality.

J: I know, that Richard Wright, he could do a lot of different things. Great non-fiction writer. Great novelist and turns out, a pretty darn good haiku writer.  

H: I know nothing about this person.  

J: What do you mean you don’t know anything about Richard Wright? Of course you know something about Richard Wright.  

H: What do I know about him?  

J: I mean….  

H: I’m Googling right now.  

J: I’m fairly certain that you read a Richard Wright novel in high school like Native Sun or his memoir Black Boy. I’m pretty positive that every American high school student has to read at least one Richard Wright book.  

H: Well I will say that despite what I may have been required to read in high school, I didn’t read all those books. 

Burning out its time
and timing its own burning
one lonely candle.