In Counting Descent by Clint Smith (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016)
John’s related banter…
While we’re talking about books, and yes, I realize that this video is a little bit scattered, I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. I don’t know why; I guess that’s just the way that my brain wants to process text at the moment, and there are two books that I would really like to recommend.
The first is Counting Descent by Clint Smith. This is a very small book, but it packs a punch. It’s got funny moments, like, there’s a poem called “When They Tell You The Brontosaurus Never Existed”, the first line of which is, “You will wonder what kind of precedent we are setting here.” But in other times, it’s gut-wrenching. It’s sad. It’s just brilliant.
vlogbrothers | Very Hard to Desclibe
You will wonder what kind of precedent we are setting here
(Unquoted remainder)
the placemats that set under uneaten broccoli
delineating the Jurassic as a place plentiful
with baby brontosaurus utter fabrication
The Land Before Time 1 through 13 all a lie
The Flintstones’ tale of brontosaurus burgers galore mere fiction
you will wave goodbye as the dinosaur joins Pluto drifting off into the Purgatory of things that once were a lot of
you will wonder what it means to have spent your entire life being taught something is real only to be told it was all an accident
the wrong skull they say
150 million years of mistake
how often are we given this message that everything would be fine if you only had a different face a different head on your shoulders what is existence really if its definition is so ephemeral
if all of that history can be snatched away in a single moment
John Green Reads Poetry 