Jim Dine's Collected Poems Reveal Poetic Dimension of Pop Art Practice

Cuneiform Press published 'Poems To Work On: The Collected Poems of Jim Dine' in 2015, featuring a foreword by Vincent Katz. The 300-page volume collects Dine's poetic works, which Katz positions as integral to understanding the artist's broader visual practice. Dine's poetry draws from multiple twentieth-century traditions including surrealism, Lettrism, Pop Art, and the New York School, with specific references to poets Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery. His poems employ techniques of defamiliarization and decontextualization similar to his visual rebuses and collages. The collection includes works like 'Travel Dust,' which juxtaposes American urban life with Moscow's industrial landscape, and 'The Untersberg Gift,' described by Katz as a 'limnal poem' marking Dine's return to poetry after years of silence. Dine's typographic experimentation and tonal shifts range from insouciance to pathos, creating what Katz calls 'a gestural act of refocusing' that separates linguistic elements from pictorial ones. The poems maintain what the text describes as 'generosity' and 'lighthearted opportunism' toward artistic traditions. Published in Victoria, Texas, the book retails for $50 with ISBN 978-0986004032.