Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1935. Dine’s paintings, sculptures, photography, and prints have been the subject of nine major surveys and retrospectives since 1970, including solo exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and a major traveling retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Art. In 1969, Trigram Press and Asa Benveniste, London, published Dine's first book of poems Welcome Home Lovebirds. Dine has made etchings to accompany Robert Creeley's book Mabel and collaborated with Ron Padgett on The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Jim and Ron and Oo La La. In 2008, Gerhard Steidl printed and published Dine’s 52 Books. Dine lives in Walla Walla, Washington, and Gottingen, Germany, and farms both places.

Karen Weiser is a mother, poet, and doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, studying early American literature. Her publications include To Light Out (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), her first full-length collection, as well as the following chapbooks: Dear Pierre (Well Greased Press, 2012); Pitching Woo (Cy Press, 2006); and Placefullness (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004). Poems by Weiser have appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter, the Chicago Review, the Brooklyn Rail, as well as several anthologies. She is also the recipient of a Fund for Poetry award and the Mellon Fellowship through the Center for the Humanities. She lives in New York City and teaches English courses at Queens College.