These poems are in the tradition “negative ecstasy,” a philosophy that the poet is nothing more than a void: in order to create, the poet requires a willing release of the ego and self, which in turn allows the poet’s void to be filled with the verse.  It is similar to what the Buddhists call  “no mind,” a method used so that works, ideas and even lives that once appeared as  imperfect or failures were, by their very nature, simply unfinished acts.   The process was comparable to what Keats described as “being in uncertainties … without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It was this viewpoint, inquiring into  the metaphysics of “failure,” that brought forth the ability to contemplate the two key themes of these poems: “La morte et Eros” – desire and death and their contrasting forces.