Christian Bok's Eunoia is a baroquish delight. The two most universal stylistic elements of Baroque music were continuo, also called thorough bass, and ornamentation. The bass of these poems are the vowels, the ornamentation the incredibly varied vocabulary built around these vowels. Here's one poem from Chapter A (every word of every poem in this chapter anchored by the vowel "a"):
Hassan can watch as all hands land a small warcraft and camp at a lava sandflat -- a basalt strand that has tar sands as black as magma ash. Wasps and gnats swarm as all hands stack sandbags and start a spartan camp. A campman, smart at campcraft, can spark a match and warm an ashpan that thaws what hard-tack a clan wants: bran mash and lard, spam hash and salt, ballpark franks and flapjack stacks (all starch and fat). A packman at camp packs a backpack and a packsack. A watchman stands watch, as all ranks at dawn act as pawns that can marshall adamant brawn and march a harsh warpath.
Then again, it ain't Johann Sebastian Bach, or any other Bach back then. Haven't laughed at/with the Brandenburg concertos. These are poems to read aloud, to laugh aloud.
Posted by: smcs | March 04, 2005 at 08:11 AM
Posted by: Mark L. | February 23, 2005 at 11:08 AM