Unnameable Books and NYRB Poets will celebrate the publication of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think with translators Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich. In addition, Eugene Ostashevsky will present The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi, Part I, his new chapbook with the artist Eugene Timerman. The reading, which will be followed by a reception, will take place at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn on Friday, May 17, at 7pm.
Mostly overlooked during his lifetime, Vvedensky is now recognized as one of the most influential poets and thinkers of 20th-century Russia. From the closing statement at Pussy Riot’s August 2012 trial:
“Pussy Riot are Vvedensky’s disciples and his heirs. … His principle of ‘bad rhythm’ is our own. He wrote: ‘It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one.’ …It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die.”—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
An Invitation for Me to Think is the first collection of Vvedensky’s work to appear in English.
For more information about the event, click here.