Crystallography [Paperback]

Christian Bok (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1999

Published in 1994, Crystallography was a gem of a book, an instant hit that was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. It has been unavailable for an ice age, and Coach House Books is proud to bring it back.

'Crystallography' means the study of crystals, but also, taken literally, 'lucid writing.' The book exists in the intersection of poetry and science, exploring the relationship between language and crystals - looking at language as a crystal, a space in which the chaos of individual parts align to expose a perfect formation of structure. As Bök himself says, 'a word is a bit of crystal in formation,' suggesting there is a space in which words, like crystals, can resonate pure form.

Lucid, sparkling, a diamond of a book: Crystallography is a crystal-clear approach to the science of poetry from the author of Eunoia.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a ’pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award for Best Poetic Debut. ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press, 2001. Bök has created artificial languages for Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchleyís Amazon. His conceptual artwork has appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. He currently teaches at the University of Calgary.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Coach House Books; 1 edition (April 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552451194
• ISBN-13: 978-1552451199
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Chemistry > Crystallography
  • #23 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Canadian

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like words and like sounds, you'll love this, December 27, 2008

By 

Carl G. (California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Crystallography (Paperback)

I forget what I paid for it--$12? $16? Something like that. Cheap. It has paragraphs you'll never read anywhere else, using long strings of words that have never before been next to one another. It's a testament to what can be done--because Christian Bok did it--if one goes off in a hole somewhere and focuses, and that's a good lesson any ol' time.
How much is one fantastic, comprehensible, and yet on the surface bizarre sentence worth to you? In entertainment or inspiration or education? I'd say--for me-- a dollar at least, and five at most. Applying that standard, this book is worth hundreds of dollars. I'm no intellectual, and I'm no freak, but I like language and words, and I like this book a lot.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 5 star exploration of language; 2 star poetry, August 11, 2007

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Crystallography (Paperback)

This is a fascinating book exploring language through crystallography that fits nicely into the Oupilo experiments. In general the book is accessible - word squares, concrete poems, charts and, yes, some poetry as "commonly understood." The most personal poems are under "Diamonds" which explores the relationship with his father, a diamond cutter. The layout of the poems in this section remains a puzzle to me. As I do Merrill's "The Changing Light at Sandover", I found myself wanting a crib sheet to point out what I felt I was missing of the author's intent.

The linguistic "games" that I found most interesting were the classification of letters by their axis of symmetry and the "dripping line" (think of water dripping from a cave ceiling). (Unfortunately the web removes multiple spaces so it is not easy to give an illustration - just think of fewer and fewer letters falling into the next line, always spelling out meaningful clauses, phrases, words.)

This book is a major tour-de-force of experimental writing. It will get under your skin. You'll read and reread digging deep to find the underlying principles. You may even become obsessed. Or you may read through it quickly dismissing it as a mere experiment.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever!, September 20, 2005

By 

Andrew Wilcox (Burbank, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crystallography (Paperback)

I am a geology major and I usually tend to avoid poetry, however, this book is quite an exception. This book took the science of geology and the art of poetry and combined them into a masterpiece. This analysis of these two fields of study is incredible and is a definite must read.