Eunoia

Winner of the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Over five years in the making, poet, 'pataphysican, performer and artist Christian Bök's much-anticipated second book Eunoia is about to change your perception of your own language forever.

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 only E, etc.). Each vowel takes on a distinct personality - the I is egotistical and romantic, the O jocular and obscene, the E elegaic and epic (Bök actually retells the entire Iliad in Chapter E; you have to read it to believe it). Stunning in its implications and masterful in its execution, Eunoia is one of the most unusual and important books of any year.

'Eunoia takes the lipogram and renders it obsolete.'

– Kenneth Goldsmith

An exemplary monument for 21st century poetry.'

– Charles Bernstein