Born in the chaos of WWI Europe, sound poetry is a genre which defies common sense and interpretation, a poetic system in which nonsense syllables take the place of words. Hugo Ball, founder of sound poetry and the Dada movement, viewed his creation as both artistic and political. Ball's innovations went on to influence poets and musicians throughout the world, from the scat singing of Ella Fitzgerald to today's algorithmic poets. Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe follows author Lane Chasek's journey to write his own sound poem. Along the way, he faces the challenge of piecing together sound poetry's legacy--how it transformed our relationship with meaning and language, and how language itself wields the power to both heal and destroy us.