nothing but

A nothing poem made of nothing but words.

word bather

A poet who bathed in words, and words were nothing to him and everything all at once.

[Thinking of poet Peter Ganick.]

poetry stretches

Again and again, poetry stretches words until and so that we are forced to look afresh at them, and by the same token at the concepts, experiences and attitudes behind them. The poet Randall Jarrell quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: ‘The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing.’

—James Camien McGuiggan, Meaning beyond definition, Aeon (online) 3 April 2023

the nothing that is

Nothing is what those without content write about.

gauged by language

If a poet writes about nothing, his language better really be something.

afraid of having said

You have a right to write about nothing, as I have a right to skip reading what you’ve written.

sweet sounding things

Avoid a poetry that would whisper sweet nothings in your ear.

word slathered

You have lavished language upon me but have revealed nothing.

not about words

Afraid the poem would be about something, the poet wrote what amounted to nothing but words.

expresses nothing

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing. When it shows itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

—Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist”

n.b.: I was in San Francisco this week and went to see a major art exhibit at the Legion of Honor: "The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde 1860–1900." The quote above was printed on the wall in the first room.

not much there

For good or for bad, poets keep proving you can write a poem about almost nothing at all.