The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi

"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

Praise for Eugene Ostashevsky:

"An irrepressible poet and thinker...the energy and vibrancy, and intellectually buoyancy, of Ostashevsky places him as an invaluable link to both the Russian past, and future, in poetics." --SJ Fowler, 3:AM Magazine

"The genuine article. He's obsessed with the kind of neat axioms that use the bitter power of logic to cut you off at the knees...The poems in this little volume are filled with groaner puns ('The Origins of the Specious'), absurdist rap, and other laugh-out-loud humor, and sometimes the flirt with the profound...All of them reveal a skeptic's love of language." --Elizabeth Bachner, Bookslut

"Wildly synthetic, rhetorically tumescent and willfully prosaic, Ostashevsky's work might be best summed up in the name of a character from his more recent work: DJ Spinoza." --Publishers Weekly

"Ostashevsky proves himself to be a great producer of dialogues...Pressing further the border between comedy and poetry, Ostashevsky forces us to reevaluate what is legitimate in a poem." --Timothy Leonido, Jacket2