Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza (Eastern European Poets Series)

By Eugene Ostashevsky

A cycle of fast, tragic, unsettling, hilarious poems about the shortcomings of reason. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0981552102
• ISBN13: 9780981552101
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.7" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

You won't regret a trip with the DJ

If comedic-philosophical-absurdist-hip-hop-opera poetry is your thing, you're going to dig DJ Spinoza. I picked this up on the advice of the Poetry Foundation blog. It's a fast read, and one that I think will reward repeated attention. It follows the adventures of the philosophical warrior DJ Spinoza as he battles the Begriffon, jousts with Andrew Marvell (using fruit) and MC Squared, and woos his Bride. This first edition is limited to 1,500 copies, and I'd get one if I were you. Highly recommended.

An extraordinary poet.

Eugene Ostashevsky is my favorite contemporary poet, and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza is some of his best stuff. If you haven't read him before, this is a perfect place to start. There is tremendous intelligence on display here, and wacky imagination, and a unique sense of humor so abnegating it sometimes sounds like despair. Ostashevsky mistrusts language and, by extension, everything that's constructed by it; that is to say, everything. It's a legitimate beef, and the poet's forehead-smacking alter-ego DJ Spinoza kvetches about it at book-length--to God, especially, whose profound irritation with him is no less poignant for being hilarious. DJ Spinoza wheedles, he argues, he complains. On the threshold of enlightenment, he crawls around ridiculously on all fours, blind as a bat, having dropped his glasses. And yet, to the extent that he has enough courage to survive his boredom--his cosmic boredom--to stand in the face of onrushing meaninglessness and hold his ground--there is something powerfully endearing about this post-heroic character. Inspiring, even. I love these poems. They make me think, and laugh, in ways that merely beautiful words do not, cannot. Per their usual, Ugly Duckling Presse has done a great job packaging them. It's a handsome little volume. I hope that through it Ostashevsky will find the audience his work so richly deserves.