Publisher Description

Rick Bursky's latest poetry collection reaches into the peculiarities of human relationships with emotional accuracy, charm, and a touch of surrealism. In poems that channel memories of brief encounters and long-lost loves through imagination and half-recalled dreams, Let's Become a Ghost Story turns nostalgia inside-out to reveal the innate humor of our most intimate connections.

Author Biography

Originally from New York City, Rick Bursky now lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising (a television commercial he wrote appeared on the 2006 Super Bowl and won advertising awards around the world). He also teaches poetry at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and occasionally copywriting at USC. His previous full-length collections are Death Obscura (Sarabande Books 2010), and The Soup of Something Missing (Bear Star Press 2004); and his chapbook, The Invention of Fiction, was published by Hollyridge Press in 2005. He has a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Review

"Rick Bursky's Let's Become a Ghost Story is a surrealist's wet dream, full of crashing chandeliers, stopped clocks, and bodies turned to smoke and ash. Bursky uses these moments of magic to navigate the riskiest corners of the human heart: love, death, grief, and losses that repeat themselves like a spell. As Bursky says, 'Everything I know about magic / I learned staring at a firing squad.' In these poems we see that sometimes sorcery is what it takes to face our demons, especially on the unrelenting page."
—Keetje Kuipers"Rick Bursky's poems are full of good news. It is that poetry still exists."
—Dean Young"In Rick Bursky's Let's Become a Ghost Story, the speaker and his lover constantly transform and trade positions: 'Once, while lying on top of me, she began to tremble, / then shook violently and abruptly stopped, / then floated halfway to the ceiling. / She was playing God, or I was. I don't remember.' The outlandish is presented so matter-of-factly that I found myself delightedly half-believing the speaker's assertion that 'According to the census I am not the only person / who lists "mailbox" as their occupation.' Bursky's surrealism is sensical and grounded in real emotion, which allows these poems to soar."
—Matthea Harvey, author of If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?

Promotional

Long Description

Rick Bursky's latest poetry collection reaches into the peculiarities of human relationships with emotional accuracy, charm, and a touch of surrealism. In poems that channel memories of brief encounters and long-lost loves through imagination and half-recalled dreams, Let's Become a Ghost Story turns nostalgia inside-out to reveal the innate humor of our most intimate connections.

Excerpt from Book

We For firewood, we disassembled a house. For food, we consulted the weeds and the slaughtered goat. For religion, we said a constellation was a man pointing to a heaven. For love, we closed our eyes and feigned ignorance. We did other things, too, but there's just so much we wanted to be remembered for. The warehouses were full and our feet were thick with blisters. There was nowhere else to carry our stories.

Description for Sales People

Let's Become a Ghost Story is Rick Bursky's fourth poetry collection. BOA published his previous collection, I'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance, in 2015. Bursky has a huge reputation in the advertising industry and has worked on accounts for numerous Fortune 500 companies. An award-winning television commercial he wrote appeared in the 2006 Super Bowl, and his poems were featured in Britney Spears's Intimate lingerie line in 2014/2015. Let's Become a Ghost Story takes a sideways approach at examining the psychology of how our memories construct past events. Through absurd statements of impossible events, Bursky digs for the emotional truths at the core of romantic relationships. As Bursky summarizes the collection: "We don't find love, we make love. It doesn't matter what the wreckage of a life says, we all create our own truth--and that doesn't mean we lie. Emotional accuracy is more important than the facts." Bursky's poems have been praised by readers and critics for their emotional honesty, accessibility, and depth. As NBCC member Victoria Chang wrote, "Bursky's poems use levity as a way to manage the darker aspects of life, of living. His poems are simultaneously funny and sad--if there was a way to bottle a stand-up comedian and a mortician, Bursky would be it." Bursky has lived in both New York City and Los Angeles for extended periods of time, and has many connections in both places. Bursky will promote the book heavily through his social media accounts. He has a substantive online presence, with a Facebook profile with about 1,200+ contacts (handle: Rick Bursky), and a Twitter account (handle: @RickBursky).

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