Eunoia
The Upgraded Edition
Christian Bök
- 120 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Eunoia
The Upgraded Edition
Christian Bök
About This Book
Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize (2002)
Stunning and masterful in its execution, Eunoia is a five-chapter book in which each chapter is a univocal lipogram.
The word 'eunoia, ' which literally means 'beautiful thinking, ' is the shortest word in English that contains all five vowels. Directly inspired by the Oulipo (l'Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), a French writers' group interested in experimenting with different forms of literary constraint, Eunoia is a five-chapter book in which each chapteris a univocal lipogram – the first chapter has A as its only vowel, the second chapter E, etc. Each vowel takes on a distinct personality: the I is egotistical and romantic, the O jocular and obscene, the E elegiac and epic (including a retelling of the Iliad!).
Stunning in its implications and masterful in its execution, Eunoia has developed a cult following, garnering extensive praise and winning the Griffin Poetry Prize. The original edition was never released in the U.S., but it has already been a bestseller in Canada and the U.K. (published by Canongate Books), where it was listed as one of the Times' top ten books of 2008.
This new edition features several new but related poems by Christian Bok and an expanded afterword.
' Eunoia is a novel that will drive everybody sane.' —Samuel Delany
' Eunoia takes the lipogram and rendersit obsolete.' —Kenneth Goldsmith
'A marvellous, musical texture of rhymes and echoes.' —Harry Mathews
'An exemplary monument for 21st century poetry.' —Charles Bernstein
'Bök's dazzling word games are the literary sensation of the year.' — The Times
'A resounding success... brilliant.' — The Guardian
'Brilliant... beautiful and strange.' —Today Programme, BBC Radio 4
'Impressive.' — Sunday Telegraph
'No mere Christmas stocking filler for Countdown fans. Rather, it's an ingenious little novel... playful and irreverent... charming.' — Metro
Frequently asked questions
Information
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;
Silences traversés des [Mondes et des Anges]:
–O l’Oméga, rayon violet de [Ses] Yeux!
I will tell thee, one day, of thy newborn portents:
A, the black velvet cuirass of flies whose essence
commingles, abuzz, around the cruellest of smells,
glaives of icebergs, albino kings, frostbit fennels;
I, the bruises, the blood spat from lips of damsels
who must laugh in scorn or shame, both intoxicants;
pleasant meadows rich with venery, grins of ease
which alchemy grants the visages of the wise;
– quietudes crossed by another [World and Spirit]:
O, the Omega! – the violet raygun of [Her] Eyes…
without refuge or return – phonemes.
resurgent souls ordain a dreamt verse:
murders, so unseen that stranglers
mourners must call the unjust schemes
slumber that engulfs the sleepers,
Sirens who sing mankind forlorn themes);
shriven when mercy redeems
who plunder shipwrecked believers);
by disciples, then by infidels:
a king; a truth that crippled minstrels
like staunch martyrs whom Furies spurn);
who lends this typewritten utterance
– an endless cycle of perseverance).
abolish symbols, when the letters burn…
you veer, oblivial.
evanescent talents.
to my shackled hand.
to paint her colour.
evaporate the tint.
freezing dumbbells.
do deliver verbals.
rinse of paintings.
daymares varied.
poised to rid us.
for studios.
a stranger.
a decision.
decide you.
Jejune vassals quote ten codas in reliquaries:
A (the ceaseless verses at occult monasteries;
requiems of dust, bound to nebulous particles:
brass bells, unsold, decreed priceless for our canticles);
I (a senseless verse – a spell, garbled in pentacles;
choruses, deemed perverse in desolate nurseries).
all its perplexing maxims, exquisite suicides;
dim minds, transcended by vivid, hexadic prisms).
a clever muse, to generate endless interludes).
O, my elegiac ode, ends in paroxysms…