Poetry. Second Edition. 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 chapter is 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. This edition features several new but related poems by Christian Bök and an expanded afterword.

Author Hometown: CALGARY, AB CAN



About the author: Christian Bök is the author of CRYSTALLOGRAPHY (Coach House Books, 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.

Reviews:
Marjorie Perloff in Jacket
Philip Howard in The Times (U.K.)
Publishers Weekly