Archivi tag: Bern Porter

Bern Porter – Found Poems

from Charles Berstein’s blog @ Jacket2 :

Sibyl, Sibila‘s English language portal, has just published Joel Lipman’s illuminating introudction to Bern Porter’s Found Poems, which is just out from Nightboat.

Read the full introduction here.

In conjunction with the publication of the book and Sibyl‘s publication of the introduction, Lipman has made available a set of Porter images, which I include here. Photos by Lipman  and Tom Barden, taken  1998-99.

read more

Ben Porter’s “found poems”

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.