JIM DINE : EACH DAY, AT NIGHT

These lines: “Again rose and sweet-pea jelly/ a vein¼” transport us into Jim Dine’s mind, a swish of hand over the words in his elaborate personal account. The magnificent details pull the reader into his heart; he paints with words, climaxing not with death but awareness. His story opens to be read with cautious appreciation: love regrets; Roses; romancing poets; Creeley talk; open heart Love; Jim the printer; private joy; abstract distances; another life; words dissolve into images; colors bright with Passion. There is a lot to peruse here. Readers beware. You won’t be able to read Each Day, At Night just once. He broke the mold of memories with his broad RED paint wash. Covered, the words magnify. This man knows his talents, knows his fate. He enjoys his life by writing about it as he continues to paint it.

— Patty Mucha

What a great master of plasticity. Energy and capacity and beauty much to admire in this sumptuous collection of Jim Dine’s poetry. With pentimento manuscript and
visuals. Poems like sculptures. Poems as testimonies to friendship to profundity of
lifelong haunting curiosity in myriad directions. Gustatory heart. And heartbreak for a shimmering wounded world. Tall order: quotidian detail, poetry-in-action never messy but musical. Pruning the garden, travel, home, muscular skinny screeds and elegies, endless conversation, struggle and wit, a huge span. Hail the hunter and gatherer! How he builds poetry with such a firm hand. Yet intimacy day and night functions and magically protects as well. He is in league with Tom Raworth, Bob Creeley, Ron Padgett. Outliers, NY Schoolers, Black Mountaineers. Our genius avant-garde. I really hear and see you here, Jim. It’s a tonic, a lifeline, so refreshing. 

— Anne Waldman 

Beautiful rhythms undergird these new poems from Jim Dine. “Tulips equal perfect and deep love” – it could be true, or not, but it sounds true. Like a mathematical formula, poetry reminds us it is not math, not corporations, not finance, not even STEM, though it may, as in this case, have stems. Jim Dine’s poetry thrives on paradox, the thing that is true even though it seems impossible, as in the book’s very title. And that title brings us close to the truth of Dine’s poetry, and his art as a whole, which is the continuity to be found in language, in color, in changes of light during twenty-four hours, in what unites us. A heroic, celebratory collection by a master poet who wants us to join him, whether in rain or in sun, “A virtuoso of voices.”

— Vincent Katz

These wonderful poems, full of the energy that comes from loving art as life and life as art, demonstrate the intense and joyous originality of Jim Dine’s mind and language. The book is not only a total pleasure to read, but it will stay with you long after. Here is a picture of life in its purest form as we “have gone on / about our business” and find “our days / full of affection, / for life / and citrus.” Full of sweetness and acid, these poems are witty, wise and tender.

— Karin Roffman