didn't register

The poet who filled out his c.v. well, and yet not a poem registered in the zeitgeist.

remains airborne

A poem that somehow remained airborne in the zeitgeist.

prevailing wind

A poet who was a weathervane of the zeitgeist.

catch the prevailing wind

His poems are raised sails that never fail to catch the Zeitgeist. [Thinking of Billy Collins.]

zeitgeist

The zeitgeist is expressed more clearly by the obscure many than by the acclaimed few. It is within the ordinary gossip and buzz, within the thousands of unacclaimed poems, that poetry takes shapes. [295]

—Alice Fulton, “A Poetry of Inconvenient Knowledge,” Feeling as a Formal Language (Graywolf Press, 1999)