John Green Reads Poetry

John: Would you like a short poem for today?

Hank: Uh yes I would. Ah but first I want to tell the audience–the listeners of the pod–that I have a bad cough, so I’m gonna do my best but if I sound gross or make bad noises, blame viruses, not me.

John: Hank I don’t want to say that you don’t seem to be at your best right now, but you don’t. You don’t seem–I don’t–I don’t feel like I’m getting 100% of that Hank Green pod energy that I come to the pod for. 

Hank: Well you know John, what really gets me going is a short poem. Is short poems.

John: Well, this one’s about depression, and it’s called “Not so far as the forest” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Actually, just part of “Not so far as the forest” so as to keep it short. 

(Reads poem excerpt)

John: “Not so far as the forest” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Longtime favorite poem of mine, Hank, I even put it in Looking for Alaska, I liked it so much.

Hank: Uhhh, yeah, that’s–that was good, I liked that, and also appropriate for post-VidCon, when I am often sick but always in a little bit of a cannot-see-the-sunset-because-of-the-clouds funk due, just due to, I think, psychology and coming down off a big high.  It’s always a wonderful moment when VidCon is over, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because the chances of something going wrong have reached 0 and it does not 0 until it’s over, but then, the weeks afterward, I’m always like, what–what is life for?  I’m no longer having that time.

That chill is in the air
Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear.
This joy, I know,
Will soon be under snow.

The sun sets in a cloud
And is not seen.
Beauty, that spoke aloud,
Addresses now only the remembering ear.
The heart begins here
To feed on what has been.

Night falls fast.
Today is in the past.

Blown from the dark hill hither to my door
Three flakes, then four
Arrive, then many more.

II
Branch by branch
This tree has died. Green only
Is one last bough, moving its leaves in the sun.

What evil ate its root, what blight,
What ugly thing,
Let the mole say, the bird sing;
Or the white worm behind the shedding bark
Tick in the dark.

You and I have only one thing to do:
Saw the trunk through.

III
Distressed mind, forbear
To tease the hooded Why:
That shape will not reply.

From the warm chair
To the wind’s welter
Flee, if storm’s your shelter.

But no, you needs must part,
Fling him his release–
On whose ungenerous heart
Alone you are at peace.

IV
Not dead of wounds, not borne
Home to the village on a litter of branches, torn
By splendid claws and the talk all night of the villagers,
But stung to death by gnats
Lies Love.

What swamp I sweated through for all these years
Is at length plain to me.

V
Poor passionate thing,
Even with this clipped wing how well you flew!–though not so far as the forest.

Unwounded and unspent, serene but for the eye’s bright trouble,
Was it the lurching flight, the unequal wind under the lopped feathers that brought you down,
To sit in folded colours on the empty level field,
Visible as a ship, paling the yellow stubble?

Rebellious bird, warm body foreign and bright,
Has no one told you?–Hopeless is your flight
Towards the high branches. Here is your home,
Between barnyard strewn with grain and the forest tree.
Though Time refeather the wing,
Ankle slip the ring,
The once-confined thing
Is never again free.