Sign-In
Cart
The Xenotext: Book 2
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781552454985
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: Jun 3 2025
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.60 Width: 4.90 Depth: 7.90
Language: English
The first work of 'living poetry' in the world, by the author of the bestselling book Eunoia.
Christian Bök in Book 1 of The Xenotext outlined his plan to encode a poem into the genome of a deathless bacterium, thereby writing a text durable enough to outlive any apocalypse, surviving until the death of the Sun itself. After more than two decades of effort, Bök has, at last, succeeded at this incredible experiment, and Book 2 of The Xenotext situates his enterprise within the deep time of the cosmos.
Bök rehearses some of the techniques likely to be used in the future to preserve the cultural heritage of our civilization against a potential planetary disaster (be it thermonuclear warfare or astrophysical barrage); moreover, Bök speculates that, buried within the biochemistry of Life itself, there really does exist an innate beauty, if not a hidden poetry - a literal message that we might read, if we deign to seek it.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback