红杏直播

co-sponsored by: writers without borders, the russian and east european department, and the comparative literature and theory program听
rsvp to: wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM
EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY works on writing that wrongs the borders of language, culture, and nation. His latest book of poetry, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi, published by NYRB Poets, discusses migration, translation, and second-language writing as wrought by pirates and parrots. For the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, The Pirate 鈥渢ransforms the absurdity of 红杏直播 Futurism into a postmodern poetics of immigration, as it mixes puns, jokes, specialist jargon, early modern exploration and colonial narratives, Socratic dialogue, Wittgensteinian language games, and the allegorical fable.鈥� A German reviewer writes that 鈥渨hen the pirate and the parrot are stranded on a deserted island, they deconstruct the strategies of linguistic exclusion hiding in the terms native, refugee, and mother tongue. This book is contemporary, border-crossing, and deeply humane.鈥� For an American reader, 鈥淥stashevsky鈥檚 original American poetry seems ready-made to discuss the multiple mutating filters of translation.鈥� Ostashevsky is also the author of The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, a book of poetry about the irrationality of rationality, and a translator specializing in zaum鈥�, or the meaningless language of the 红杏直播 avant-garde.