Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads

Higher Education


Catalogs
News
Desk/Exam
(0)
Wish List (0)
Wish List
Download high-resolution image Look inside

The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi

Part of NYRB Poets

Author Eugene Ostashevsky
Look inside
Paperback
$14.00 US
New York Review Books | NYRB Poets
On sale Mar 14, 2017 | 144 Pages | 978-1-68137-090-3
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies
See Additional Formats
An original collection from one of the most active poets in contemporary literature.

Winner of the 2019 International Poetry Prize from the City of Münster

The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi is a poem-novel about the relationship between a pirate and a parrot who, after capturing a certain quantity of prizes, are shipwrecked on a deserted island, where they proceed to discuss whether they would have been able to communicate with people indigenous to the island, had there been any. Characterized by multilingual punning, humor puerile and set-theoretical, philosophical irony and narrative handicaps, Eugene Ostashevsky’s new large-scale project draws on sources as various as early modern texts about pirates and animal intelligence, old-school hip-hop, and game theory to pursue the themes of emigration, incomprehension, untranslatability, and the otherness of others.
Eugene Ostashevsky was born in Leningrad in 1968 and immigrated with his family to New York in 1979. He is the author of the poetry collections Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, both of which are published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and a scholar and translator of Russian avant-garde and contemporary poetry, especially by the 1930s underground writers Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. He currently lives in Berlin and New York and teaches literature in the Liberal Studies program at New York University. His contributions to New York Review Books include translating Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think (winner of the 2014 National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association) and The Fire Horse: Children’s Poems by Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Kharms.
Eugene Ostashevsky View titles by Eugene Ostashevsky

About

An original collection from one of the most active poets in contemporary literature.

Winner of the 2019 International Poetry Prize from the City of Münster

The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi is a poem-novel about the relationship between a pirate and a parrot who, after capturing a certain quantity of prizes, are shipwrecked on a deserted island, where they proceed to discuss whether they would have been able to communicate with people indigenous to the island, had there been any. Characterized by multilingual punning, humor puerile and set-theoretical, philosophical irony and narrative handicaps, Eugene Ostashevsky’s new large-scale project draws on sources as various as early modern texts about pirates and animal intelligence, old-school hip-hop, and game theory to pursue the themes of emigration, incomprehension, untranslatability, and the otherness of others.

Author

Eugene Ostashevsky was born in Leningrad in 1968 and immigrated with his family to New York in 1979. He is the author of the poetry collections Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, both of which are published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and a scholar and translator of Russian avant-garde and contemporary poetry, especially by the 1930s underground writers Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. He currently lives in Berlin and New York and teaches literature in the Liberal Studies program at New York University. His contributions to New York Review Books include translating Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think (winner of the 2014 National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association) and The Fire Horse: Children’s Poems by Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Kharms.
Eugene Ostashevsky View titles by Eugene Ostashevsky

Additional formats

Other books in this series

Other Books by this Author

Related Articles
Subscribe

About Higher Education

Penguin Random House Education

Penguin Random House

About Higher Education

Penguin Random House Education

Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Higher Education
    Wish List (0)