It's that they're nothing. (Madrid)

Mostly it’s not that poets are bad. It’s that they’re nothing. Most readings too. They’re not bad; they’re nothing.

This is something they should have taught us in MFA-land. Bad is not the devil. Bad can be good. The devil is what you see all around you: large piles of neither-good-nor-bad, towering stacks of nothingness. Nothingness and nobody’s ever gonna reread it. Miles and miles of poetry that completely passes for art—but nobody loves it.

Anthony Madrid