eunoia nr this book makes me want to write poetry. neat word, too. 151001 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Oh! I love that! Except I got so annoyed at the phrase in the O chapter "Frosh who do post-docs" (etc.) I was like "FROSH DON'T DO POST-DOCS, MR. BOK - NOW YOU'RE JUST BEING SILLY." I think I like the U chapter the best. It's earthy and grumbly and has the funniest sex scene. 151002 ... e_o_i Context so that this isn't just an in-groupy thing: "Eunoia" is a book of poems in which each chapter only uses one vowel throughout. There are certain rules: each one has to mention food, drugs, sex, war, and a sea voyage. I think. The E chapter retells the story of Helen of Troy. My poetry prof thought the author terribly pretentious. Well, he probably is, considering one of his project was "writing" onto DNA so that his work would last billions of years or something. But the prof made the mistake of taking him too seriously. Christain Bok also wrote a book called Crystallography, which is also a very pretty title in my opinion. I suppose it's a kind of geometry? (See "snowflakes" - I like crystalline patterns.) It's also the name of one of the library books torn up in the book version of A Clockwork Orange. Books are unkind to books. Bok with an umlaut is maybe also pronounced book, which makes his name kind of funny: is he really a Christian book? I thought he was an agnostic palimpsest upsetting a festschrift or something. A spoken word artist in the body of an academic. I think I wrote fanfiction of Eunoia when I was in my undergrad. If I have time on the weekend I'll dig it up. It involved The Lord of the Rings. 151002 ... nr i can see him being pretentious; when i met him the other night at the xenotext (part 1) launch, there was a quality about him. he's definitely one of the most ambitious poets out there, though. the xenotext is the DNA project e_o_i mentions above. in bok's own words: The Xenotext is my nine-year long attempt to create an example of “living poetry.” I have been striving to write a short verse about language and genetics, whereupon I use a “chemical alphabet” to translate this poem into a sequence of DNA for subsequent implantation into the genome of a bacterium (in this case, a microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans—an extremophile, capable of surviving, without mutation, in even the most hostile milieus, including the vacuum of outer space). When translated into a gene and then integrated into the cell, my poem is going to constitute a set of instructions, all of which cause the organism to manufacture a viable, benign protein in response—a protein that, according to my original, chemical alphabet, is itself yet another text. I am, in effect, engineering a life-form so that it becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem, but also an operant machine for writing a poem—one that can persist on the planet until the sun itself explodes… when science and poetry collide! 151003 ... e_o_i I can't decide whether I like the conceptual aspect of his work or not. I can't even decide whether I like concepts right now. I could say I prefer tangible things, but vowels aren't exactly tangible, are they? (A Mouthful of Air by Anthony Burgess is an interesting book about phonetics, if you can bear the idea of an interesting book about phonetics.) Bok's limited_alliteration, interior-rhyme style reminds me somewhat of George Elliott Clarke, whose writing is more tangible to me. Maybe it's something about matching up idea with emotion. But then, I like surrealism, and surrealism is about disturbing that whole balancing act, isn't it? I have no more decision power left. I used it all up at work. Anyway, thanks for filling in those details for me; I'd have liked to be there. 151008 ... e_o_i "I think I wrote fanfiction of Eunoia when I was in my undergrad. If I have time on the weekend I'll dig it up. It involved The Lord of the Rings." -me, October 2, 2015 I was looking through my old notebooks and I found it! And hey, today IS a weekend. ... EUNOIA: DELETED SCENES: "O" CHAPTER Forsooth! Horror dogs poor Frodo. Poor Frodo plods onto rocks of Mordor, off Gorgoroth. "O Lord of Mordor," Orcs drool, "how to stop Frodo?" "Don't hop on Pop!" Morgoth's son growls. "No! No! No!" Orcs howl. "Wrong book!" ... Okay, I know Sauron wasn't technically Morgoth's son. But hey, frosh don't do post-docs either! 160102 what's it to you? who go blather from