It is not surprising that that a blog devoted to People, Words and Pictures should love a good word when one comes around and today’s rather splendid word is ‘Eunoia‘ which is the shortest word in the English dictionary to contain all five vowels. Eunoia, which means ‘beautiful thinking’, and would surely make a nifty business name, is the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok’s book of fiction in which each chapter only uses one vowel. The ‘I’ chapter is particularly pleasing…
“Hiking in British districts, I picnic in virgin firths, grinning in mirth with misfit whims, smiling if I find birch twigs, smirking if I find mint sprigs. Midspring brings with it singing birds, six kinds, (finch, siskin, ibis, tit, pipit, swift), whistling shrill chirps, trilling chirr chirr in high pitch. Kingbirds flit in gliding flight, skimming limpid springs, dipping wingtips in rills which brim with living things: krill, shrimp, brill – fish with gilt fins, which swim in flitting zigs. Might Virgil find bliss implicit in this primitivism? Might I mimic him in print if I find his writings inspiring?”
Front cover
