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A review by intangiblemango
Eunoia: The Upgraded Edition by Christian Bök
5.0
"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 handstamp that can stamp a wax pad and at last plant a mark that sparks an ars magna (an abstract art 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."
Thus begins Christian Bok's experimental poetry work Eunoia, a re-telling of the Iliad (uh, ish) with each chapter dedicated to the use of a single vowel. This is a masterpiece of style, though admittedly not of plot. I am in awe.
Note: I recommend reading the postscript, "The New Ennui" first, or at very least before the poems that begin after chapter 'U'.
Thus begins Christian Bok's experimental poetry work Eunoia, a re-telling of the Iliad (uh, ish) with each chapter dedicated to the use of a single vowel. This is a masterpiece of style, though admittedly not of plot. I am in awe.
Note: I recommend reading the postscript, "The New Ennui" first, or at very least before the poems that begin after chapter 'U'.