Bök: U

Artikkeli Jacketissä, joka kannattaa tsekata: Marjorie Perloffin "The Oulipo Factor: the procedural poetics of Christian Bök and Caroline Bergvall". Ohitan nyt hänen mielenkiintoiset huomionsa vapaamittaisuudesta ("their ‘free verse’ is really — and perhaps intentionally — no more than lineated prose") ja kiinnitän huomionne Perloffin ajatuksiin Christian Bökin Eunoia:sta. On kiinnostava ajatus, että kirjaimet, niiden sointuvuus JO kantavat merkityksiä. Ensin pätkä Bökin teoksesta: luvusta U:

"CHAPTER U for Zhu Yu

Kultur spurns Ubu — thus Ubu pulls stunts. Ubu shuns
Skulptur; Uruk urns (plus busts), Zulu jugs (plus
tusks). Ubu scripts junk für Kunst und Glück. Ubu
busks. Ubu drums drunks, plus Ubu strums cruths
(such hubbub, such ruckus): thump, thump, thrum,
thrum. Ubu puns puns. Ubu blurts untruth: much
bunkum (plus bull), much humbug (plus bunk) — but
trustful schmucks trust such untruthful s tuff; thus
Ubu (cult guru)must bluff dumbstruck numbskulls
(such chumps). Ubu mulcts surplus funds (trust
funds plus slush funds). Ubu usurps much usufruct.
Ubu sums up l ump sums Ubu trumps dumb luck."

Ja sitten Perloff:

"None of this can fully prepare us for Bök’s U chapter. In English, U is the dirty vowel — the emblem of slut, lust, fuck, cunt, dugs, humps, bum, stuffs, rumps, crud, bust — one could go on and on. This is Bök’s shortest chapter because monovocalic words with U are much less common than those with the other vowels and also, as we see here, much less varied. Bök can write about Ubu here but Alfred Jarry’s hero is one of the only authors available in the U pantheon. True, there is the Biblical Ruth and Krenek’s Lulu, but we find neither philosophers nor poets in this chapter. The only art in the U-world is sculpture, but here perceived as primarily junk sculpture; the one musical instrument is the drum, the one gourmet dish is duck, served, possibly with rum punch. Not much variation here, not much finesse, delicacy, lightness, or the Exotic other. Yet, before we write off U words entirely, we should remember that this is the chapter of truth and of those who blush when they violate it."