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As an Associate Editor and regular reviewer for Books in Canada, Carmine Starnino published a less-than-pleased article (here, in part) regarding the value of Christian Bök's popular experimental book Eunoia. Bök fired back in that latest issue of Matrix Magazine (also out of Montreal). 

I solemnly swear not to coin the term Starbök regarding this feud...

Allow me a moment to say that I am a fan of both Christian Bök and Carmine Starnino. I appreciate their poetic and critical contributions to Canadian letters for different reasons, and think of them as two of the most important and interesting poets working in Canada. However, following this "feud" from afar, I find myself inclined in this case to agree with Mr. Bök.

One can try to make an argument that the Oulipo School of poets' constraints and forms do not produce valuable literature, but it seems history has already precluded this. Value is assigned by History at the gates to the Present, and here we are in the present having a valuable discussion.

At the very least, Oulipo (and other avant-garde movements) influenced subsequent generations of poets (including Bök's) by opening the possibility of formalized experiment as a positive point of entry to poetic production. Part of the fate (or continuing currency) of the avant-garde is its tendency to get copied and co-opted by the establishment. It is the ghetto gentrification of the literary world. So if we can agree that Oulipo itself is/was a viable form and worthy of discussion, then is it not the critic's duty to examine the work at hand (Eunoia) for what it accomplishes? Otherwise it begins to sound simply like a wish that Oulipo (or maybe Modernism from the other end) hadn't happened, which is totally non-productive. Besides the fact that neither could exist without the other, you create a situation wherein one critic futilely battles history, what has already happened and been established and will not be undone.

I think it is important to remember that Christian Bök may not only be an heir to the Oulipo movement but in fact it's greatest practitioner of all time. And while he may now try to deny and downplay his lyrical roots he is also, as I remember it, an inarguably fantastic poet in this genre. I would go so far as to predict his ability to master any form he tried his hand at. Why? Because he is a dedicated craftsman who works his ass off, like the best of the rest of us, but also because he has something most of the rest of us do not: a massive, ever-growing intellect that gives depth and heart to the rather common ability to turn a phrase. Using someone like Solway as a comparison to a work of such importance and magnitude as Eunoia is like comparing apples and oranges for the sake of selling apples.

While my personal taste runs toward the lyric over the formally experimental, my instinct as a critic is that Eunoia is one of the more important books of poetry to ever come out of Canada.

First posted August 11, 2003

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Eunoia at Amazon.ca
Credo at Amazon.ca
Books in Canada
Matrix Magazine

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