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The Story Behind "VOID" "VOID", the embedded poem in hole boy, is very much a part of the entire work -- similar to the relationship between Edgar Allan Poe's "The Haunted Palace" and "The Fall of the House of Usher". But since its evolution developed separately from that of hole boy, and since I believe it's a strong enough piece to stand on its own (much like "The Haunted Palace"), I've devoted this space to explaining how "VOID" came to be. Of Fire Sermons and Chess Games In August 1996, midway through my conception of hole boy, I did perhaps the most depressing thing since my faux-suicide attempt: I woke up in the middle of the night, decided I couldn't sleep, and read T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" three times in a row. To quote my roommate's reaction when I told her: "Wow. That's angst." Thus began my almost maniacal obsession with "The Waste Land". I'd never been so moved by poetry I hardly understood. I immediately went to the library and checked out almost every piece of criticism available on the poem (and I think I still have a couple overdue books). Two of the gems I checked out -- and eventually bought from a bookstore -- were Robert L. Schwarz's Broken Images and The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts, edited by Valerie Eliot. The former, published in 1988, is a skillful and exhaustive line-by-line interpretation of "The Waste Land". The latter includes not only the first edition of the poem, but also annotated drafts by Ezra Pound, Vivien Eliot, and Eliot himself. Both of these books gave me both a clearer understanding of the poem and an intriguing insight behind the scenes of the modern masterpiece. Void Where Prohibited Fast forward to mid-November. I attended a small party and drank quite a bit. Someone decided to stick Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket in the VCR. Although I'd watched it before, I'd never seen it in an inebriated state. This was my first real experience with alcohol-induced creative inspiration. After the movie was over, I walked home, hopped onto my computer, and hammered away at the keyboard, spewing forth whatever came to mind in a frenzy. Uppermost in my mind were Full Metal Jacket, "The Waste Land", hole boy, and the morning of May 20. "VOID" is the final result of that night. I completely and absolutely embraced Eliot's approach to "The Waste Land" with my poem. The style is very much his (not as good as Eliot, mind you, but Eliot's style all the same), with sprinkles of e. e. cummings and Ezra Pound; it reads with what seems like nonsensical "heaps of broken images", but upon close examination, there is a very concrete structure and meaning. The original poem was perhaps three times longer than it is now. Unfortunately, I neglected to save former versions of the poem, so I do not have a record of its evolution. What you see here is a month's work of rearranging, tweaking, deleting, reworking, and perfecting. I'm awfully proud of the final result, as flawed as it may be; it's the only poem I've ever really kept and wanted to publish in some form or another. Notes on the Notes Because the poem is so difficult, and because I don't ever expect any academia to waste time dissecting its meaning, I have taken the liberty of providing notes with this stand-alone copy of "VOID". I realize that in many ways, this is like the magician showing the audience how he did the trick; however, I think that attempting to make "VOID" more accessible and understandable is more important than maintaining its status as a "puzzle poem". I don't give too many clues away -- in fact, most readers are still going to have to do a little bit of work to entirely comprehend the poem. I do believe, though, that it's a heck of a lot easier to understand than without the notes. Most of these annotations are cleaned-up bits of correspondence with wolfkin, a poet I met on the EFnet IRC channel #poetry. The e-mail I sent him is much more comprehensive in its explanation (and also a lot less polished). If you're still having trouble with the poem and would like a copy of the wolfkin correspondence, e-mail me a short message with the subject line "REQ: void/wolfkin e-mail". Back to top of page