Eunoia

Title: Eunoia
Author: Christian Bök
Recommened by: Ben Moss

Back to book reviews, right? Right!

It's a poetry book, but unlike anything I'd ever seen before. The first I heard about this book was from my friend Ben Moss, who has one of the poems as his instant messenger away message. I read it, and like it, but it took me a while to figure out what was odd about it, so here it is:

Pilgrims, digging in shifts, dig till midnight in the mining pits, chipping flint with picks, drilling schist with drills, striking it rich mining zinc. Irish firms, hiring micks whilst firing Brits, bring in smiths with mining skills: kilnwrights grilling brick in brickkilns, millwrights griding grist in gristmills. Irish tinsmiths, fiddling with widgits, fix this rig, driving its drills which spin whirring drillbits. I pitch in, fixing things. I rig this winch with its wiring; I fit this drill with its piping. I dig this ditch, filling bins with dirt, piling it hight, sifting it, till I find bright prisms twinkling with glitz.

The thing is, it only uses the vowel 'i'. And that's the idea behind this book. There are 5 different main sections, each devoted to a vowel. Each section contains entries like the above, but using the vowel for that section. It's really amazing how the author can have such freedom of expression while being limited to one vowel. Some of the sections are better than others, and my favorite is 'i' because everything seems more lyrical, and as you might imagine, the 'u' sections isn't very large, but it's all impressive.

Recommendation: 6/10, some of them are really good, but most of the time, it's just more impressive that someone was able to write this book.