A Song at Twilight

Poetry. "When you have circled the sun more than eighty times, mourning has become deeply folded into your daily life and memories are apt to make an unexpected appearance. ('I am a child with red ears'). There are many more dots to connect. ('My thoughts / go back to / Jules Ferry Square / where I was given/the secrets of / unhappiness.') And yet, despite the death of many close friends and colleagues, Jim Dine continues to be a purposeful and enthusiastic peripatetic celebrating the commonplace, often with a sweet humor ('Return to the Metro! / all the Alsatian 'crybabies' / are our cousins, / (the little elves)'). Dine's perceptions are a torrent that he shapes. The music animating the poems is all his. Whether short or long and skinny on the pages, the poems are constellations of light brimming with declarations of love, sad and happy memories, of being alive to the tremors and aftershocks of the world. Through it all Dine remains full of wonder and in pursuit of joy."--John Yau