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"I Love Information is a vigorous examination of knowledge, belief, and which begets which"--
List of contents
When You Get to Sparta Voice 1
Late Preamble 3
Katelyn 4
Katelyn 14
Jubilate Agno 15
Katelyn 20
Katelyn 22
Katelyn 23
Died Singing
Katelyn 26
Rilke Voice 28
Poem After My First Revelation 35
Cassandra from Agamemnon Voice 37
My Son Is Home 39
Penelope Voice 42
Katelyn 45
Seraphim or Nothing 47
Baby Blue 57
Katelyn 61
Katelyn 63
One-Day Winning Streak 64
Last Night Kyle 66
Upstairs Bar 68
Talking 71
2008 75
I Love Information 77
About the author
Courtney Bush is the author of
I Love Information and E
very Book Is about the Same Thing. Her films, made with collaborators Jake Goicoechea and Will Carington, have been screened at festivals internationally. She lives and works as a nanny in New York.
Summary
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.
Foreword
- Digital galley campaign, with outreach targeted at major, poetry, feminist and regional media, as well as booksellers and librarians; digital galley available for download on Edelweiss
- Advertising with the Academy of American Poets
- Special promotion in collaboration with the National Poetry Series
- Newsletter promotion via the publisher to readers, sales and academic lists of more than 30K contacts
- Academic outreach to seed book in MFA, poetry, literature, and women’s studies courses
- Major launch in Brooklyn
