John Green Reads Poetry

So many poems to listen to!

Hey, there’s a missing poem!

Hi! This website is an ongoing labor of love inspired by John’s self-proclaimed love of poetry ¹ and the mission of Ours Poetica.²

We’re working very hard combing through the vast amounts of online content John and Hank have created ³ — and continue to create! — to find every instance of John reading poetry.⁴ Most of these were short poems that used to appear as an opening segment in the Dear Hank & John pod.⁵

Check out our growing list of missing or lost poetry-related John Green media:

Lost Media (help us out)!

We have a long way to go, and are using the posts’ dates as a way to organize everything chronologically with relevant tags to make everything extra useable!

So if you have a suggestion of something we missed or would like to share a piece of poetry-related media you’ve found…

Let us know!

—

  1. This is also a recurring riff in many of the opening segments of Dear Hank & John
  2. A lovely play on the Latin phrase Ars Poetica (“The Art of Poetry”)
  3. Examples: 1 | 2
  4. And, occasionally, someone else, such as his wife, his brother, or a poem inspired by one of Hank’s rants. Admittedly, some things are qualified as ‘poems’ rather loosely — John has read lyrics, and other nontraditional items as poetry, and that’s a wonderful thing!
    Because poetry is, always, what we make it.
  5. And are still missed by Nerdfighters everywhere!
ALL POEMS

Related Resources

Dear Hank & John

Or as he likes to call it: “Dear John & Hank”

Transcripts*
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Sonnet 55 (excerpt) by William Shakespeare

A.k.a. “Not marble nor the gilded monuments”

John’s related banter…

I quite like them, like, Shakespeare manages to cram a lot of emotion into his highly structured form. And maybe most importantly, the sonnet’s make Shakespeare’s case for why he thinks poetry is important in the first place: that people die but poetry lives on. Like in sonnet 55, Shakespeare writes:

And yet, quick side-note, Shakespeare talks about how bright this young man’s memory will shine but we know nothing about him. The poetry may last but people still don’t.

crashcourse | Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Crash Course Literature 304)

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

(Unquoted remainder)

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

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