The Pirate Who Does Not Know The Value Of Pi

(Paperback, Main)

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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 make themselves understood by people indigenous to the island, had there been any. Eugene Ostashevsky's first large-scale project since The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, this new book pursues the themes of emigration, incomprehension, and the otherness of others in a far more complicated and persistent way than its predecessor. Characterized by multilingual punning, humor puerile and set-theoretic, philosophical irony, and narratological handicaps, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi draws on early-modern texts about pirates and animal intelligence, 1960s Russian folklore, old-school hip-hop, game theory, controversies of copyright, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, abbreviated as PI.

Reviews

This isnt just a book: It is a multi-vocal orchestra. It performs some of the most playful, surprising, and innovative musical effects of our day. Yet at the center of all this play there is the large emptiness of loss. Loss, the mother of metaphysics.
Ilya Kaminsky

"In this collection language is examined and experienced as a source of bafflement, tragedy, and pleasure. The poems are deftly woven from a variety of languages, traditions, and texts. Ostashevsky, whose first language is Russian, spins his song from the displacements and discoveries of his own voyages for our reading pleasure...Despite being buffeted by storm and shipwreck and existential questions, our pirate and parrot never lose their balance. Neither does Ostashevsky in this hilarious, deeply serious, collection." Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., Hyperallergic

"Like Wallace Stevens, mutatis mutandis, Ostashevsky inspires us to find pleasure, if not a firm foothold, in the shifting sands of mere being." Boris Dralyuk, Los Angeles Review of Books Blog

"Language of every kind is at the heart of Ostashevskys little book of prose-poetry...This poetry captures emotional realities with moments of fleeting lyricism.... The ridiculous jokes and whimsical soundscapes are all part of the poets exploration of unfathomable, tragicomic human experience." Phoebe Taplin, Russia Beyond the Headlines

The Russian-American author of this deliciously sardonic parable of the non sequitur can find no assurance that things in this world happen for a reason. On the contrary, his is a poetic universe where, to cite Wittgenstein, everything we see could always be otherwise.
Marjorie Perloff on The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza

"The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi deals with the fundamental inability of language as means of expression, utilising a lively and irreverent sense of humour in making the most complex of subjects accessible and familiar with a clarity and irony which warms and disconcerts simultaneously. There is a lyric and musical quality to his poetry informed by the traditions of jazz, early New York Music Hall comedy and the pirating life." Eve Richens, The Quietus

Author Bio

Eugene Ostashevsky is the author of the poetry collections The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza and Iterature, both published by Ugly Duckling Presse. He is the editor of OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism, and the editor and translator of Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets), winner of the ALTA National Translation Award. Ostashevsky teaches in the Liberal Studies program at New York University.