With Fragile Spirit

Few contemporary artists can demonstrate an oeuvre as varied, consistent and influential as that of Jim Dine—incorporating painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography, and sweeping across more than six decades. Fewer still can say they are respected poets. Dine has been writing and performing intensely autobiographical poems since the late 1960s, and With Fragile Spirit is his latest collection, consisting of five volumes. These differ greatly and include “A Beautiful Day,” exploring Dine’s polarities of experience from delight to melancholy, from disillusion to celebration; and “Like the Big Boy Tomato,” a hand-written version of his 2021 hate poem “Electrolyte in Blue,” probing themes of anti-Semitism, racism, climate change and failed world leaders. Together, these books affirm poetry as the unceasing critical flow that augments and energizes his visual work.