Found Poems
by Bern Porter
Joel A. Lipman, pref.; David Byrne, fwd.; Mark Melnicove, afterword
Nightboat Books
2011 • 400 pp.
Poetry
$24.95 Paper, 978-0-9822645-9-1
On the eve of Bern Porter’s Centennial, his classic text, Found Poems, comes roaring back into print in a handsome new edition featuring two essays contextualizing his remarkable life and work. As Dick Higgins said, “Porter’s Found Poems have the same seminal position as Duchmap’s objets trouvées.” This book collects Porter’s strongest “Founds,” his combinations of mass-media images and text that he used to reflect American culture as in a funny-house mirror: twisted but true.
*
BERN PORTER (1911–2004), studied physics at Colby and Brown, worked on the Manhattan Project, but embraced pacifism after the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. He published Henry Miller and ran a gallery in Northern California before returning to his native Maine, where he ran for governor (unsuccessfully), started a think tank for drop-outs, and created his classic series of “Founds,” collected in more than a dozen books. JOEL A. LIPMAN, artist and writer, is a professor at the University of Toledo. MARK MELNICOVE worked with Porter from 1979–1996 on performance and publication projects. He lives in Falmouth, Maine.