Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök teaches English at the University of Calgary.
1. The Late Heavy Bombardment
A long poem about the hellish origins of life on Earth-a series of
bombastic firebombs that crescendo, then go quiet: a Virgilian welcome to
the Inferno.
2. The March of the Nucleotides
A series of poems and texts, which introduce readers to the basics of
genetics, with some pastoral material that illustrates many of the thematic
premises for the book.
3. Colony Collapse Disorder
A long, dark poem that translates Book IV of The Georgics by Virgil-(a
"pastoral nocturne," providing a pretense for retelling the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice).
4. The Virelay of the Amino Acids
A long, love poem, whose repetitious incantation emulates and embodies the
molecular structure of each of the amino acids (the building materials of
life).
5. Alpha Helix
A long poem that constitutes a kind of paranoiac catalogue of instances,
where helices appear in the most quotidian phenomena, imbuing everything
with life.
