Eunoia: The Upgraded Edition

By Christian Bok

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781770562592

Christian Bok

Christian Bok is the author of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a ’pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award for Best Poetic Debut, and ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science (Northwestern University Press, 2001). His book Eunoia won the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize and is the best-selling Canadian poetry book of all time. Bök has created artificial languages for Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. His conceptual artwork has appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. He currently teaches at the University of Calgary.

Book preview

EUNOIA

CHRISTIAN BÖK

COACH HOUSE BOOKS

Copyright © Christian Bök, 2009

UPGRADED EDITION

This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 259 2.

Published with generous assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also appreciates the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Bök,Christian, 1966–

    Eunoia / Christian Bök –New ed.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-55245-225-7

    I.Title.

PS8553.04727E86 2009      C811'.54      C2009-904269-X

Source of my being, and my life’s support!

EUNOIA call’d in this celestial Court.

William Hayley

The Triumphs of Temper (1781)

for the new

ennui in you

EUNOIA

CHAPTER A

CHAPTER E

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER O

CHAPTER U

OISEAU

VOYELLES

VOWELS

PHONEMES

VEILS

VOCABLES

AEIOU

AND SOMETIMES

VOWELS

H

W

EMENDED EXCESS

THE NEW ENNUI

EUNOIA

CHAPTER A

for Hans Arp

Awkward grammar appals a craftsman. A Dada bard as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal). A madcap vandal crafts a small black ankh – a hand-stamp that can stamp a wax pad and at last plant a mark that sparks an ars magna (an abstract art that charts a phrasal anagram). A pagan skald chants a dark saga (a Mahabharata), as a papal cabal blackballs all annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and Kafka, Marx and Marat. A law as harsh as a fatwa bans all paragraphs that lack an A as a standard hallmark.

Hassan Abd al-Hassad, an Agha Khan, basks at an ashram – a Taj Mahal that has grand parks and grass lawns, all as vast as parklands at Alhambra and Valhalla. Hassan can, at a hand clap, call a vassal at hand and ask that all staff plan a bacchanal – a gala ball that has what pagan charm small galas lack. Hassan claps, and (tah-dah) an Arab lass at a swank spa can draw a man’s bath and wash a man’s back, as Arab lads fawn and hang, athwart an altar, amaranth garlands as fragrant as attar – a balm that calms all angst. A dwarf can flap a palm branch that fans a fat maharajah. A naphtha lamp can cast a calm warmth.

Hassan asks that a vassal grant a man what manna a man wants: Alaskan crabs, alfalfa salad and kasha, Malahat clams, lasagna pasta and salsa. Hassan wants Kalamata shawarma, cassabananas and taramasalata. Hassan gnaws at a calf flank and chaws at a lamb shank, as a charman chars a black bass and salts a bland carp. Hassan scarfs back gravlax and sprats, crawdad and prawns, balks at Parma ham, and has, as a snack, canard à l’ananas sans safran. Hassan asks that a vassal grant a man jam tarts and bananas, jam flans and casabas, halva, pap-padam and challah, babka,

Reviews for Eunoia

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book, for me, was all about wordplay amidst rhythmic variations. The ideas themselves are abstract and some of the poems were dubious in their comprehension. Nevertheless, it was an interesting collection.

[alfirin-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is definitely an acquired taste, and one which I would recommend only to people who love words, word games, and linguistic oddities. It just so happens that I’m one of those people. The majority of Eunoia consists of five chapters; A, E, I, O, and U. Each is dedicated to its title vowel, the only vowel to occur within the chapter. The rest of the book is a section called ‘Oiseau’ and consists of a series of clever poems/word exercises.The first five chapters were largely enjoyable, each managing to follow a story to a greater or lesser degree. Chapter E was absolutely outstanding - a retelling of the Iliad focusing upon Helen of Troy – and for this chapter alone Bök deserves a literary prize. At the very back of the book there are rules listed for what each chapter must contain, and although I think the rules should have been placed before the ‘Oiseau’ section I was pleased that they were included after the chapters. By introducing the rules after the reader had already worked through the chapters, and enjoyed them on their own merit, it allowed the chance to reread the stories and appreciate them in a new light. The only thing which really spoils these chapters is Bök’s insistence on adding rather pervy sex scenes: it’s utterly unnecessary.The ‘Oiseau’ section is, if possible, even more obscure. The highlights have got to be the poem containing only the letters in the word ‘vowel’ and the ode to the letter W. I adored most of this book, and have a great deal of respect for Bök’s linguistic abilities, but feel I should point out that it is really not for the average reader.

[magnuscanis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The principal piece in this book is Eunoia, a univocalic lipogram in 5 chapters. Each chapter consists entirely of words using only a single vowel (one vowel per chapter). As with most poetry, it works best when read aloud so that the sounds can be fully appreciated. Although it's written in English there are occasional appearances of words from other languages, mostly French but also some German and Latin and at least one bit of Spanish, so a reading knowledge of these languages is handy, though not essential. I enjoyed it more for the sonic effect than for any actual plot that might have been contained within the chapters.There is also a collection of shorter poems, entitled Oiseau, which pays homage to the French antecedents of Eunoia (i.e. lipogrammic poetry), and a brief afterword explaining the motivation behind the poems and the extra constraints imposed on Eunoia (as if writing with only one vowel were not sufficient challenge).

[operaman_22 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

"Eunoia, which means 'beautiful thinking', is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels."The concept behind this book is intriguing: Five chapters, one devoted to each vowel, that vowel being the only to occur in its chapter. This could go one of two ways: Clearly, it's a wordsmithing exercise and could easily be what I refer to as "mental masturbation," or it could end up being delightfully euphonic and imaginative.I feel Bök was striving for the latter but that the result was closer to the former. There were certainly moments, as images ethereal flitted by, evoked by words that, because of the nature of the exercise, flowed from subject to seemingly disparate subject in what felt like stream of consciousness. But then there was the awkwardness, as the meanings of words were drastically bent to make them fit the exercise, foreign-language phrases substituted for wrong-vowelled English words, and laundry lists of words gratuitously thrown in. In the end, rather than being delightful to read, I found it mostly tedious.Eunoia describes itself as a novel, but it's more like a prose poem or concept piece. The only chapter that has any coherent sense of plot is Chapter E, a retelling of The Iliad. (Other chapters have plots, but they are so absurd and disjointed that I can't take them seriously.)Now, my friends know that I am anything but a prude, but I found it just a bit disturbing that every chapter contained graphic sex. Then I read the explanatory pages at the very end and it made more sense: "Eunoia abides by many subsidiary rules. All chapters must allude to the art of writing. All chapters must describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage. All sentences must accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism. The text must exhaust the lexicon for each vowel, citing at least 98% of the available repertoire…. The text must minimize repetition of substantive vocabulary…. The letter Y is suppressed."These final few pages should really have been a preface. I might have enjoyed the text more as a word game of sorts had I been aware of these subsidiary rules instead of attempting to parse it as a story.There is more to Eunoia than the exercise in assonance. After the five single-vowelled chapters there is a small collection of "poems". These are also wordsmithing exercises, but they are more enjoyable to read. The elegy for the letter W is particularly delightful.In conclusion, if you like clever, challenging word exercises, you might enjoy Eunoia. But if, like me, you're looking for more, you're likely to find it rather tedious.

[wendyrey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A small but complex book, more sound poetry than anything else. The first section is a series of chapters using only one vowel and as many different words as possible, As a very visual person I missed the other ' rules' as I got caught up in the patterns, the spikiness of i for instance is particularily clear. A tour de force of word play that I need to revisit to look for the internal themes.

[sirfurboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was lucky to get a copy of the paperback version of this book as a prepublication copy through the member giveaway programme.Eunoia is an amazing book - it is, to my mind, a book of poems in that the beauty of language is the focus more than the story.The first five chapters are each dedicated to a vowel (in alphabetical order), and each chapter only contains words containing that voewl and no other. What is more, the author has constrained the stories in other ways and used the majority of all words that he could use in the writing.After these five chapters there are other random experiments in language, such as the poem written only with the letters in the word "vowels".I am very glad I read this book. It was an amazing feat of language that took the author 7 years to write (and the only surprise was that he could complete it at all). On the downside it is not an easy read! The constraints of the book make the language hard going. There were words there I had to look up (and I generally don't have that problem). The mixture of words that in other works would be clearly pretentious with occasional gutter language also felt odd. Particularly in the "u" chapter, I was both impressed and dissapointed that the writer could describe sexual intercourse using just words with the "u" vowel - but imaginations will not run far as to which words he used. That rather sullied the beauty of the book in my opinion.Hard going it might be, but this was not a long book and it was very much worth the read. Anyone who loves language cannot help but be impressed by what is achieved here.

[flissp_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I first heard of this book through a radio program and it intrigued me. Eunoia (meaning "beautiful thinking") is the shortest English word containing all five vowels and each of the five main chapters of this book are restricted to just one. There are additional rules:i) Each of the chapters must refer to the art of writing.ii) Each chapter must describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage.iii) All the sentences have to have an, "accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism." (I have to confess, I don't know what syntactical parallelism is).iv) The text has to include as many possible words in it as it can.v) The text must avoid repeating words as much as possible.vi) The letter "Y" is to be avoided.So you can see that, irrespective of my thoughts, or those of anyone else, this book is a pretty impressive feat.Additional chapters (grouped in "Oiseau" (bird; the shortest word in the French language to contain all five vowels) include "And Sometimes", a list of all words in the English language containing no vowels; "Vowels", a series of poems in which all the words are anagrams of the words in the first line; and "Emended Excess", a poem which using the words containing just the letter E, not used in Chapter E.It's very clever and the rhythms that emerge from the single vowel chapters had very distinct sounds - something I enjoyed. However... I suspect that this book would probably be appreciated far more by someone who really enjoys analysing poetry. For me, (and here I confess that I do not read a lot of poetry - an important aside), it was just trying a little too hard - it was too calculated. I couldn't help but feel that if all the additional rules (or at least the first two in combination) weren't there, the text would flow so much better. For example, in nearly every chapter, it felt disjointed to skip from talking about writing, to the "story" part.So, while my imagination was caught by the idea of the exercise, I didn't really get beyond this. Almost certainly a book for someone who likes to pull apart their poetry and admire the technique however.Oh, and I enjoyed the discovery of a great new word (Eunoia)!

[jimelkins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

But why does he cripple the interest of the book by using Perec-style rules of inclusion: "All chapters must allude to the art of writing. All chapters must describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage" (that is from Bök's Afterword, called "The New Ennui"). Yes, the language is mesmerizing, and yes, Oulipo-style restrictions, as in Perec's work, can produce unpredictable and consistently fascinating distortions of conventional narrative lines and ordinary usages. Those inventions owe their hypnotic quality to the fact that a reader can't decipher the tone, the voice, the style of the text because language is continuously deviated by rules that have nothing to do with ordinary narrative. All that is well known, and enjoyed, by fans of Roussel, Perec, and the other Oulipo writers. I entirely agree, and that is why I bought this book. But there is a second-order logic that is missing from Oulipo, and it becomes evident here. Why insist on just that assemblage of disparate narrative elements (the nautical scene, etc.)? Superficially, because it is yet another apparently random, willful restriction on conventional writing. But that is only a superficial answer, and the lack of a better answer goes to a blindness in Oulipo. Consider the reader interested in the passages that "allude to the art of writing." Consider the momentary annoyance such a reader feels as the narrative inevitably swerves aside to accommodate the "culinary banquet." Annoyance and "chafing" (one of Robbe-Grillet's words) is integral to the project of Oulipo, but not that specific annoyance. It remains at the level of ordinary narrative engagement, and is not folded back into the new experience generated by the rule-bound text. This book, and some of Perec's, would be so much stronger if the choice of mandatory subjects, and the transitions between them, were motivated at the level of the language, and not at the level of the critique of literary forms. As a reader, I relish annoyance: I don't mind it, and I actually look for it. But I want to know that it resonates with the act of reading, and not just with a loose, unjustified, arbitrary accumulation of generative rules.

[hannahkiwi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Upon being presented with the book (it was a birthday gift), I was warned that while the claims of the blurb that the book would reveal characteristics of the vowels might seem trite, I should read the book before formulating opinions upon the hyperbole of advertising or the arrogance of the author. Having read the book, I come to the conclusion that Mr Bok may be as arrogant as he pleases. The experiments he does with language are worthy of praise.

[tronella_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A pretty short book, but fun to read. The first five chapters each use only one vowel, as well as following various other rules (e.g. "must describe a nautical voyage", "must avoid the letter y", etc.) which are described at the end. The rest of the book contains various other examples of restricted forms of writing.I found myself reading large parts of this out loud. It seems there are many more one-vowel words than I thought -- the "e" chapter manages to describe the Battle of Troy, and the "u" chapter has an entire sex scene. I was pretty impressed!

[kimgroome · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cool poetry with vowels, good words that sound neat together.

[hermannstone · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

silly in an irritating way. There is hardly a line or sentence that doesn't grate on the inner or outer ear.