Found poems

by Bern Porter

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 trouvees." 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.

Genres: Poetry, Art

1 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Bernard Harden "Bern" Porter was an American artist, writer, publisher, performer, and physicist. He was a representative of the avant-garde art movements Mail Art and Found Poetry.

In 2010 his work was recognized by an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dense, overwhelming time of postmodern poetry or maybe some kind of proto-internet art. These "poems" aren't meant to be read, they're meant to be glossed over, flipped past, taken in without any separation between them. Reading like scrolling an endlessly populating webpage or driving past walls of dense downtown signs, catching bits and pieces. Finding and manipulating the shape of text, altering it's form, making it nonsensical but almost believable.

[J & J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Huh?

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the project and it has (had?) an undeniable affect on readerly habits. From this end of the telescope, however, it looks a little silly (and was never actually readable). One of those projects outstripped by its own idea. More gesture than expression.

[Kevin Stebner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the idiotic introduction from David Byrne, this is excellent collection of found poetics from the otherwise difficult to track down work of Porter.

To "read" these, as such certainly misses the point (though these can certainly be read, as choice IS expression and those choices are expressive). But infinitely more useful for inspiration and study for those delving into concrete/visual/experimental/??? fields of poetic exploration, for it's surprising bits of syntax, humour of mechanical language, the hugh variance of type and layout., Even the use of image. Especially in its hundreds of pages of scope, even in glossing over, there is an abundance to find useful and, in Porters own spirit of appropriation, to do the same.

[Michael Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

more sophisticated than my experience of found poems. some lol moments. no essays in the edition i read. a page turner.

[Dean Oken · Rating 3 out of 5]

a fun collection of ephemera, but none of these are close to poems. there are fragments, and the potential for ideas. reading this felt like sorting through my collage drawer of paper scraps

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptually, I love the Duchampian readymade quality of Porter's found poems. However, the grand majority of them don't succeed much beyond the conceptual level. Much like Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel," once it's been done it's been done. The doing is what's important, but it doesn't make a lasting impact on viewers. The same can be said for Porter's Found Poems. I'm glad he made this book for all that it does to challenge our views on poetry and language itself, but many of the "poems" don't actually work as poems. In short, a worthy art experiment; middling poetry. That said, well worth a look for the concept alone. Glad I "found" Porter.