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Does Anyone Else Have This?

2025-08-29 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:04 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Personal essay

Hank, who told John on Dear Hank and John that he cannot hear poetry, guesses that the hard work his young brain did to learn language made his parsing a kind of muscle memory that breaks on unusual syntax, and takes it as a reminder that people move through subtly different worlds.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Apology for the birthday text; the Dear Hank and John episode where Hank confided he cannot hear poetry; his guess at why

  • ★ Hank apologizes to John for his crappy birthday text. — 00:00:00 · John Green
  • ★★ Hank says the brothers recently met in an episode of Dear Hank and John, which he calls a banger and recommends checking out. — 00:00:00 · Dear Hank and John, John Green
  • ★★ Hank says that in the episode John read him a poem and Hank confided that he cannot hear poetry. — 00:00:00 · Dear Hank and John, John Green
  • ★★★ Hank guesses, admitting he is talking out of his butt, that his trouble with poetry has to do with the very hard work his brain did early on to understand spoken and written words. (hedged) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Language processing as muscle memory: unusual syntax, poetry as effort, his childhood work to learn language, graphic novels

  • ★★★ Hank says it feels to him like there is a muscle memory to language processing, and he is a strongly muscle-memory guy. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says he will never improvise a virtuosic guitar part but can brute-force a strum pattern onto the 12 chords he drilled through thousands of repetitions, which feels analogous to his language. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank says he practised understanding meaning in typical spoken syntax and book-style written punctuation, so when people talk differently or break up that syntax, he cannot parse it without a lot of effort. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank wonders whether forcing effort is part of the point of poetry, adding that he does not know and that it seems hard for him but not for John. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says that if there is any truth here, which there probably is not, listening to poetry as an adult might help him understand what language was like for himself at six, seven and eight. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says that as a little kid he had to focus extremely hard on understanding spoken and written language, until his brain developed the pathways and it became normal; he wonders whether everything was like poetry at first. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says graphic novels affect him similarly though less badly, making immersion more labor, and he is perplexed watching John parse poetry cleanly or Orin absorbed in a comic book. — 00:01:56 · John Green, Orin Green

00:02:26 — Poetry readings in his writing program, 'poetry blindness', and the reminder that people move through different worlds

  • ★ Hank recalls going to poetry readings when he was in a writing program and having no idea what happened. — 00:02:26

  • ★★ Hank names his condition 'poetry blindness', says it is a real phenomenon, and wonders whether he is alone in it. — 00:02:26

    “I have poetry blindness.”

  • ★★★ Hank says this reminds him that we all move through subtly different worlds: two people in the same circumstance have different experiences, which is obvious but hard to remember. — 00:02:26 · perspective-taking

In the description and comments

  • ★ Replying to a viewer who struggles to parse sung lyrics, Hank says in a comment that he is the other way: sometimes lyrics are the only thing he can pay attention to. — creator comment

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Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: poetry (concept)

Also: comics · Dear Hank and John · graphic novel · muscle memory · Orin Green · perspective-taking

Also centred on poetry (concept): The Road Less Traveled By · I, Too, Dislike It

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