Fish Singing Foxes is two books in one. Half of the book is an exploration of Gacelas, a series of poems that Federico Garcia Lorca wrote with a then modern take on Ghazals. Dancing Bear advances the form with ghazel-like leaps of imagery and recurring themes. He uses the form to navigate a modern world of consumerism, social apathy and over-hype. The rhythms and repetitions draw the reader to join and lend their voice to th...
Fish Singing Foxes is two books in one. Half of the book is an exploration of Gacelas, a series of poems that Federico Garcia Lorca wrote with a then modern take on Ghazals. Dancing Bear advances the form with ghazel-like leaps of imagery and recurring themes. He uses the form to navigate a modern world of consumerism, social apathy and over-hype. The rhythms and repetitions draw the reader to join and lend their voice to the work. The other half of the book, experiments with form by creating a new series of poems that use a single line from a contemporary poet’s poem to create a new poem. Once again, Dancing Bear displays a mastery of words to which he can grow images using a single grafted branch while also paying homage to the original poem and author, while maintaining a level of gravitas coupled with whimsy. Throughout Fish Singing Foxes, Dancing Bear injects a sharp sense of humor that knows both the borders of playfulness and gallows’ humor. He presents two very different forms that reveal his revelry of language and image.
Fishing Singing Foxes is J. P. Dancing Bear’s fifteenth collection of poems. He is editor for the Verse Daily and Dream Horse Press, and founding editor of DMQ Review and American Poetry Journal (APJ). His book Cephalopodic won the Glass Lyre Press 2014 Kithara Prize. His book Inner City of Gulls (Salmon Poetry) won PEN Oakland’s Josephine Miles Literary Award 2011. His chapbook What Language was winner of the 2002 Slipstream Prize. His work has appeared in thousands of magazines and anthologies around the world and translated into Chinese. He has translated Nicaraguan poet, Blanca Castellon, and Mexican poet, Oscar Wong. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, writer and poet, C. J. Sage, his beloved cat, Zeus, and several rescued hounds.