Love Is a Burning Building. This item is unavailable.Love Is a Burning Building

Love is a Burning Building is the second collection of what are also known by insiders as “the birthday poems,” written as homage to friends, family, colleagues, associates, acquaintances, and contemporaries. In these works, Bear employs a hybrid form of the prose poem, relying on colons to break up phrases, refrains, and ideas, as well as to tear down some of those very same things. This combination results in a masterful balance in which language is exalted. Dancing Bear never loses track of his theme: cycles—renewal, rebirth, regeneration, change, growth, and hope. These poems are refreshingly positive in their outlook but are not ignorant of the negative facets of cycles that can age all of us too quickly. While the poems were written for individuals, they bear a deep, undeniable universality.

J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of five other full-length books of poems and six chapbooks. His poems have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies and have been recently translated into Chinese. His chapbook, What Language, won the 2002 Slipstream Chapbook Prize; his book, Inner Cities of Gulls, won the 2010 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award; and his book, Conflicted Light, was Highly Commended in The Forward Prize 2010 (UK). He is the editor of The American Poetry Journal, and the owner of Dream Horse Press. He is the host of “Out of Our Minds” a weekly radio show for public radio station KKUP featuring some of today’s best contemporary poets (which can also be heard in podcasts). Bear has translated works by Nicaraguan poet Blanca Castellon, and Mexican poet Oscar Wong into English. He recently began working with Yu Xuan to translate contemporary Chinese poet, Sheng Tong (aka Holy Child), into English.