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May 26
poetry
Andre Whiteberg's picture

A Poem About Absolutely Nothing


Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

What even is nothing?

Is it the absence of matter and energy?

Is nothing even possible?

Hold on, that last line was poorly phrased.

Let my try again:

Is it possible for nothingness to exist?

There we go. Much better.

Now, where was I?

Oh, right, nothing.

I was talking about nothing.

The show Seinfeld is sometimes described as “a show about nothing,” but that’s wrong.

Seinfeld is a show about Jerry Seinfeld’s life.

It’s pretty funny.

But also pretty boring.

Now look where I’ve gotten. 

I’ve gone from nothing to Seinfeld in only twelve lines!

Is that how the big bang happened? 

Just nothing, then BOOM, sitcoms.

If that’s true, then that would be pretty depressing.

13.7 billion years of history, just for sitcoms?

Anyways, I’ve gotten off track again.

Back to nothing.

Nothing.
 
Posted: 05.26.22
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  1. May 29, 2022

    I absolutely love this poem! It’s funny, self referencial, and a bit philosophical in a quirky, hilarious way. I think that the best poems are the ones that allow you to see the inside of the poet’s mind in all of its quirky glory, and this poem definitely does that. I loved the title before I even read the poem, but the poem wasn't what I expected from the title. I thought it was going to be a poem without a subject, but instead it’s subject is absolutely nothing. I actually liked it even more than I expected to from the title, though. One of my favorite parts of the poem is how it keeps saying thighs like “Now, where was I” and “Anyways, I’ve gotten off track again”. It kind of reminds me of the writing style of the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. One of my favorite lines in that book is “but this is what is called a digression”. I just love how honest that is. Most books and poems do get off topic, but they try to hide it by blending it as seamlessly as possible into the next part of the book or poem. One of the things I love about both the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime and A Poem About Absolutely Nothing is that they both don’t try to hide their digressions. I also love that the philosophical question of whether it is possible for nothingness to exist is possessed next to discussion about pointless sit-come, and how you kind of blend both together in the query about whether all of the history of the universe so far has led up to pointless sit-come. So, in short, thank you for writing this. It’s not just my favorite of the poems written by my classmates, it’s one of my favorite poems ever.

    Chickengirl
    Yay!!!

  1. May 29, 2022

    This poem is an impressive feat. Going from nothing to Seifeild in only 12 lines. Something I definitely could not do. The idea of nothing is so broad and yet so small simultaneously. The getting off track part was relatable. I have done that so many times I’m surprised I’m not doing it right now talking about something completely random yet somehow related enough to be in writing. Also, I think there are probably a few other things that have been significant within 13.7 billion years, like pizza, pizza rolls, strawberry lemonade, sushi, Will Ferrel, Toy Story, etc. Those are some of the bigger ones, but a few others.You were also very blunt with the title. Straight to the point. Which I mean, fair enough, I can’t judge. It’s a pretty good title. That’s like the hook sentence right there. Anyone who happens to be scrolling through YWP posts would probably read that. It’s nice it’s not so long that it doesn’t feel like a poem, but it’s long enough that I get just enough out of it to be satisfied. I don’t know how much of Seinfeld I have personally watched, so I can’t say whether it’s good or not but is it that boring. Every time I think about that show, I think of Garfield. Now that is a good show. I feel like they could have some correlation, but I don’t know. Also, is there a difference between nothing and absolutely nothing? I feel like it’s just a context thing because when there’s nothing, there is nothing, and when there’s absolutely nothing, there’s still nothing. It doesn’t add or decrease the quantity of nothingness because there is no quantity. Weird when you think about it. Anyway, good poem. Better than anything I could have ever written.

  1. May 29, 2022

    I think this poem poses a very important and hard to answer question: what is nothing? I enjoy how it seems like the narrator of the poem does not know either, and all that comes to mind for them is something. I think that perfectly shows how hard nothing is to define, because when trying to define nothing, you make it something by giving it meaning. So how could one define it?
    I personally think nothing can only be defined as nothing. There is no way to compare the lack of anything to something that does not lack everything. Nothing, as a concept, is a hard thing to be sure of. Can nothing exist? Will it ever exist? Has it existed before? Is it even possible for nothing to exist? I think not, in terms of humanity and its ability to comprehend abstraction. We will never know or comprehend nothing, because speaking of nothing makes it something. I do not think humans can ever know nothing because our comprehension of it is the lack of something, and is nothing really just the lack of something? Or does nothing go deeper than simply the absence of anything?
    Off the topic of nothing, I think the line “13.7 billion years of history, just for sitcoms?” is a very powerful line, even if not made so intentionally. Who is to say those 13.7 billion years did not happen just for sitcoms? The time and evolutionary paths it took to create the human race are fascinating, but we are still just living through future history. Time will not end with us, and neither will history, as far as we know, because why would we be the last step in evolution? Then again, we could be wrong about that. Evolution brought us to the stage we are at, where we have sitcoms, so there is technically nothing proving all of the past did not simply exist just for the creation of sitcoms. Of course, given how small they are compared to the rest of everything, that cannot be true, but we are just living in a bubble of space and time and we would not, could not, know otherwise.