{"title":"Courtney Bush","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"i-love-information-book-courtney-bush-9781639550036","title":"I Love Information","description":"I Love Information, selected by Brian Teare as a winner of the 2022 National Poetry Series, is a sophisticated and cerebral examination of knowledge, belief, and which begets which.   Egret feathers. Pulverized chickpeas. A “faint but constant series of ovals and lines” that, remarkably, spell the name Penelope. “Nobody owns the meaning of these things,” Courtney Bush writes, but this does not stop the poet from seeking, from “reading meaning in the garbage” and in the flowers growing there. What does she seek? Not facts. Instead, something transcendent and mysterious, knowledges that can only be unlocked through experimentation with language, with art.     In lieu of linear thought, Bush’s poems operate under unique logic systems that grow and branch like vines, driven not only by the urge to learn but also by the need for connection—between people, things, stories. Her speakers make cognitive leaps with youthful credulity, eager and open. “It comes down to a few things,” says one. “Vessels and bags \/ Every crude tool \/ Every day a friend to tell.” And another: “I want to tell you what a sword is. \/ To want to tell you has been my entire life.” They are explorers of the pathways between our outer and inner worlds, translators between what is and what could be.     Bush’s reverence for the act of thought echoes that of a religious scholar gazing at the heavens. In order to learn, these poems suggest, we must believe the not-known is worth knowing. We must let belief hover around all parts of our lives, as a child does. “To have the idea of the secret chord is to have the secret chord,” Bush writes. To learn, we must make believe.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49751311286545,"sku":"NGR9781639550036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50387162366225,"sku":"CIN1639550038G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397562470673,"sku":"CIN1639550038VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51043146826001,"sku":"NIN9781639550036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51318635168017,"sku":"GOR014226057","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52671014764817,"sku":"NLS9781639550036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1639550038.jpg?v=1750896264"},{"product_id":"movie-book-courtney-bush-9781956921397","title":"A Movie","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e, a book-length poem written in sentences, explores the ways movies are woven into the fabric of a life, as cultural products, as objects of intimacy, as social touchstones, as an ideal, as shorthand for certain kinds of experience, while also telling the story of the poet's production of an eighteen-minute vampire movie.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePraise for \u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e, Courtney Bush presents us with a screen upon which we can view her virtuosic intelligence, pathos and wit, heart and ear in action. The result, \u003cem\u003eA Movie, \u003c\/em\u003e helps us understand that movies really are actually everything. I mean, really, everything  Movies are the magical invocations to a changed and better life. They're also products of impromptu corporations' intent on capitalizing upon our innermost signatures of feeling. They're projected on the universe's biggest screens and they're on in the background while we're doing something, anything, else. But above all, movies are things that we make, in the basement, in the classroom, in the studio and the streets. Like poetry they are the things we do with our friends. I left the theater of \u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e with wet and salty cheeks-tears of celebration of what this book has taught us and tears of gratitude for giving me the urgent feeling that I must immediately deliver my life kinetically into poetry-the highest compliment I can give.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrandon Brown, poet, translator, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Four Seasons\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYou surface from a Courtney Bush book the same way you leave a matinee screening: dazed, altered, shocked back into time. \u003cem\u003eA Movie \u003c\/em\u003eis a wise and utterly unguarded testament to the reward of making art-what of the world we mark, manipulate, and set apart to make the rest more bearable. The bright life, Bush reminds us, is what Dante called the life outside the Inferno, the life he left behind. It is the bright life to which she returns us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJameson Fitzpatrick, author of \u003cem\u003ePricks In The Tapestry\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e documents the determined acts of collective fantasy and work that it takes to make a film, to make images move. If I were to adapt this book for the screen, her syntax would be the main character-played by, say, Kate Winslet-honoring the source material by hiding a dark secret behind its beauty and directness: Bush loves, too, the stubborn work that viewers do, with their naps, their interruptions, their plot summaries, their partial views, to make the images stop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRainer Diana Hamilton, author of \u003cem\u003eGod Was Right\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf poetry was written true without the affectations and writerly tropes, you'd get something crystalline and pure such as Courtney Bush's \u003cem\u003eA Movie.\u003c\/em\u003e I've never read a book like this really, though I've never met a poet, (or person) like Courtney Bush in general. Part film criticism, part diary-of-an-artist, \u003cem\u003eA Movie\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles the speaker's idea and then attempts to make a sexy vampire film. But it's also a book about making art, and thinking about making art, and if you do either you'll want to read this too.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBen Fama, author of \u003cem\u003eDeathwish\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51679925338385,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51679925567761,"sku":"NIN9781956921397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1956921397.jpg?v=1751188108"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-courtney-bush.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}