Void of Course
Published: October 1998
By: Jim Carroll
Publisher: Penguin Poets
Length: 113 pages
Cover design: Gail Belenson
Cover photograph: Joshua Sheldon
Dedicated “to Laura,” this book contains 75 new poems,
most of which are titled “Poem.”
Contents
- 8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain
- Facts
- The Bakery
- The Child Within
- Train Surfing
- Goethe’s Early Garden
- Zeno’s Law of High-Heel Shoes
- Jukebox
- Sick Bird
- Spy
- Bad Intentions
- Insomnia
- Radiation
- While She’s Gone
- Lines
- My Father’s Last Words
- Translating
- What Burroughs Told Me
- For Virginia
- Easter Sunday
- Flash Flood
- Specific Instances
- Ecology
- Crown of Thorns
- Locked Wing
- The Big Ambulance
- The Ocean Below
- Note
- A Plea
- Dance Floor
- Note
- Long Distance
- Native Moon
- The Black Rose
- Valentine
- Franz Kline’s Old Studio
- Grains of Sand
- 1957 (Hurricane)
- Film
- Message Left on a Phone Machine
Trivia
- “Void of course” is a term from astrology referring to a time when the moon is in between zodiac signs. Projects begun with the moon “void of course” will either remain unfinished or fail to produce the desired results.
- Carroll was born under a void of course moon.
- This is the first book Carroll wrote using a computer.
- In the cover photograph, Carroll is sitting on the dock where the survivors of the Titanic landed.
- Laura, to whom the book is dedicated, designed and printed the River Jordan broadside.