John Green reads Poetry 

shout out to who ever made the text by text animations! This channel, I can already tell, is 100% my jam 👏

If I had a dollar for every time I heard John say “the Norton Anthology of Poetry” I’d be rich enough to give John the rights to the Norton Anthology of Poetry.

A poem about poems on a poetry channel: John couldn't be more on brand. I do love it, thanks for sharing :)

I love how the brothers Green both have ASMR channels now♥️

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY HAS RETURNED

"We cannot admire what we do not understand." I'm already in love with this channel.

"When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us." That was beautiful.

For a couple of years now, my husband and I have been wishing for a John Green poetry podcast. Thanks for making our wish come true. 🥰

ooooh I love it, I'm already digging this channel. I debated whether it was appropriate or not, but I decided that I would like to share something I wrote if anyone cares to read it; There is a small plant by my windowsill. It keeps the air fresh, and creates a lightness It has no true base function, but I decorate it for birthdays and on Christmas. Twinkling tinsel is hung between its branches like metallic silk. And boisterous lights fill in the empty gaps. I water my plant on Tuesdays, as it is my plant, and my responsibility to do so. I trim the dead leaves, turn the soil and wipe away the dust. Maintenence ensures my plant stays pristine.

Someone in the comments below said "but I don't know how to read poetry". I felt the same way, and then one line in that poem hit home pretty quickly. I wrote a thing. -- Gardens are easy to create. With very little effort they get themselves going; they want to be alive. If there’s just one person who will spend time in that garden, it will try to capture them. To draw them in, flower by flower, word by word. Delighted in the irony, the garden knows that it’s the colour that will catch the eye. A scape need only be interesting enough in one small way to capture; a turn of phrase or flourish. Gardens are easy to create. It’s the damn toads that are the problem.

Great reading, thanks John! Also, perfect visual too, as I tend to rush reading, this helps me to really focus, listen, think line by line.

I think I like poetry but I don't really know how to read it so I hope this channel can help me in my journey a little bit

I remember when you found your Norton Anthology of Poetry. Glad you didn't lose it again.

While this channel is still young, this might be seen. Thank you! I have needed something like this so bad. As a severely dyslexic writer, I have always struggled with poetry. The rhythm does not come naturally off the page and the meaning is lost between the gaps of ink. Yet this channel has, already, helped me appreciate it in a new way. The format is perfect, the intention is clear and I enjoy poetry now... finally!

Love the truth of this poem. I also love the truths of metaphors in foreign languages. Sometimes, since I can't parse the language "just so," the words have a deeper impact. Their impenetrable grammar connotes an authority that bears sussing out. I wade deeper into Russian Christian metaphors in my adult years, simply because, I have to wade deeper there.

ah yes john's famous norton anthology of poetry =)))

Man, John can really read the hell out of poetry. loved it!

I love it! And what a great poem to use to launch the channel. I can't wait for the next one.

This new channel is so great:)

I already love this channel❤

already in love with this channel

This was beautiful. Really looking forward to hearing the poems to come.

I love this channel so much already. Can't wait for more!

What a lovely way to begin the day. I knew this channel was going to be grand.

VERY excited about this channel!

I love this so much!!!

I wish this kept going ❤️ I’m so excited for this channel. Thank you!

Oh, I love this so much already. I cannot wait to see what other works, both familiar and new, this series brings.

I really liked how you animated the text of the poem. I find it easier to understand the writing when I can see the text and hear it read aloud. I am really excited for this channel!

Love this so much!! This channel will son become my favorite thing about RU-vid

Love this channel.

I just came from John's latest video about this channel and I am loving it!

I absolutely love this!!! From the way it's read, to how the video is done. This is my new favorite obsession.

So good!

I LOVE this channel

I am so excited for this project. This is going to bring poetry to a whole new audience who never really thought of it as interesting until now.

I love this so much. The sound the the visuals and everything about this video is a wonderful experience, and I look forward to hearing and reading more poetry. 🥰🥰

This is the first, and probably only, channel where I've 'rung the bell'. Thanks for this great initiative!

I just made a 'poetry' favorites list a few days ago. When the timing of something feels like poetry.

A voice calming a sea of emotion and anxiety. Thank you John Green

Love this,, I can listen this for hours...like seriously listen to it for hours. So, please try to upload more frequently from now. But do at your convenience. And also more Jhon Green would be Awesome.

Hi, yes, ok. I need about 100 of these videos as day. Thanks so much.

THANK YOU

i love this.

Yes !!!!! My prayers have been answered !!!

Demand the rawness and that which is genuine

I used to not like poetry, and then I went to uni and took a creative writing class. I realised that it wasn’t that I didn’t like poetry, it was that I had never had anything to say before. I never had something I wanted to say that could only be conveyed through poetry. It was a great experience.

I could fall asleep to the sound of John reading poetry

I had no idea I needed this editing style in my life (the combination of the overhead view of books and then text that appears on the screen) but oh my god. Oh my GOD, this is EVERYTHING.

ive spent nearly 30 years of my life utterly unable to comprehend poetry, and 16 hours ago a vlogbrothers post opened my eyes to it. holy god am i excited to explore this new thing

This is a great way to start my day 😊 Thanks, John ❤

Same! I can still remember when I've read it first time in highschool. I used to really hate poems and this poem really changed my mind about it.

What a great poem!

"We can't admire what we cannot understand." That pretty much sums up my relationship with art and poetry. PBS's Art Assignment really helped me with the former. Hopefully this channel will help me appreciate poetry. There is a way that John reads things that, what was previously a farrago of words becomes a profound poem. Thank you.

Thank you.

just loved the idea so bad that I wanted to *translate* it to my first *language* _Arabic_ but this feature was locked , I wanna make the world read it too , and I know that alot of people will have difficulties in understanding *poetry* in _English_ even if they speak it really well. I'll be so happy to help you adding translations to other *languages* 😊.

If this video is anything to go by I can say quite assuredly that my life will be improved greatly by the occasional poetry reading landing in my subscription box.

JOHN PLEASE READ MORE POETRY TO US🙏🙏🙏

I still have my university copy of the Norton Anthology. It's one of my prized possessions. Love this poem.

I would love John to put together his own poetry anthology and to then release an audio book

"...If you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry." The truth has never been spoken so beautifully. Poetry isn't just a clever assortment of words and sentences to fit a certain rhyme scheme. Anything which makes you feel alive, and allows you to express that feeling in its rawness and poignancy, is poetry. Eloquence is not always what makes poetry, the feelings evoked in the reader is.

I always look at poets and authors' birth and death dates to settle them in their appropriate place in history in my mind. But this generation always catches me: Ms. Moore was born before automobiles and (common) electricity, and died after we landed on the moon. What a life.

I am my own favorite poet, because I can find the words I need much better than any proxy. It may be pride or a stubborn independence, but I believe it is also a thing that I can be happy with.

I bought a copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry because of this video. John should get a royalty.

Soooo looking forward to this channel! Also, can John read everything to me please??

hi I love this

💛

Can you do short poems on Dear Hank and John again please? It was always my favorite :)

This is crazy. I was just thinking I want john to read me poetry!

This was wonderful! I can't wait for all the new poetry this channel will help me discover! :)

Why did you stop? Keep going.....

Wow yes, good.

I've never clicked faster on a video haha ❤

Ok yes please thank you

I've always disliked poetry, but I find myself liking it more and more as I grow older, especially when I hear it in my head with John's voice from his Thoughts From Places videos.

How delicious, can't wait for more

Who else wants a John Green meditation/sleep stories app? ✨

I give reading poetry 10/10

Reading starts at 0:30.

What is it with this gagged left beginnings (indented?)?

I can tell that it was a conscious decision to not try to read into meanings of the poems because in poetry meaning is often in the eye of the beholder but i also think that in not analyzing them something is missed and an analysis at the end even if it's no more than your own views on the literary work would add to this immensely.

What was the footnote?

Missed opportunity for the video to be titled *"Poeception"*

1:51😮

Can we submit our poems or read our own even if they aren’t published?

Would that happen to be Chip’s Norton Anthology of Poetry that you stole and then misplaced and then rediscovered at the office?

Fantastic channel, would love to hear some Dickinson from you guys

the composition of the stanzas is really confusing to me. I don't know if it's intentional or of there's some meter that I'm not grasping, but it just sits with me in a weird way

🙃🤸

why does this poem lowkey sound like the critics review at the end of ratatouille

Am I the only one who was waiting for the camera to pan to the other page?

A QUESTION OF FLOWERS I. Generations, I cling to the image: bougainvilleas breaking away. Slow descent into palms of children unable to fly kites. Summer heat and translucent visions. Where are the sparrows, hope's usual metaphors? I love the sound of "crushed petals". Children, stare at the residue, at apparent lines. They are the trodden paths of Coleridge and Villa. They are your footprints foretold. Bloodied, ever flows. Wash your hands with the scent of forest fires, remnants of undoing. Play with me, in memory of generations past who tilled whatever left by crows and bugs. II. Play, that I admonish you with the ways of drunken poets. That we're in the company of yellow bells, santan, dama de noche. They must be parables of tainted selves. How immersed in rain showering twigs and thorns! How embraced the role of visitants! Our eyes yearning for extracts! For petrichor has arrived: heaven meets earth, gloom meets sensation. Dungeon of a home: is this for collective dread for the withered, untamed? III. I missed all about innocence, excavations clanking through the garden, crumpled grocery bags. Thud and rasp and ephemera. As thunderstorms subside, as the Devil's vigilance to the slaughter of joys. You must be frightened by this inwardness. Children, listen to a bedtime story unraveled in this rainy day. Imagine a rocking chair silhouetted against the fireplace, against souls thrust and battered. Imagine a soliloquy in eternal thread. A tale in stitches: measured to scare, woven to beguile, torn again to last. The moment the sun grins with his obstinate rays will I crush the remaining petals, surviving shadows of Cirilo and Sylvia. Phantoms might hoard from me, little souls might trick me into hide and seek. The gods might punish with oblivion's beauty. Here come menacing fingers watched by fog and the creaking of chaos. The question of flowers is one of endless love. Suffer. Ooze with exclamations. To baptize the unborn. [03 May 2020]

Wait, but isn't that Chip's copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry?

Moore's 1967 revision, in its entirety: I, too, dislike it. ___Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in ___it, after all, a place for the genuine.

That we do not admire what we cannot understand

What purpose does the formatting and whitespace serve in this poem? It doesn't seem related to the content as far as I can tell, but I know very little about poetry.

That’s the smallest pop filter I’ve ever seen.

Thank you! I'd love to talk poetry with you sometime. Hit me up.

I am interested in porety.

Okay so is it bad when I don't understand a poem about poems. I am lost and confused. So far I understand the beginning. Poems feel pretentious and extra. So because I feel that way I am a better audience for finding "real" poetry? I think that is what I have gathered but even then I don't really know if that is how I understand it.