Foundlings
The ingenious and uncanny borrowings in Foundlings: Found Poems from Prose remix and redub the literary canon with dazzling insight and wit. So much of the magic of the 'found' poem resides in the acuity of the finder. In its textured approach to classic works, Foundlings is a powerfully inventive bricolage showcasing, quizzing and subverting literary debates about authorship and canonicity.
Praise for Foundlings
‘These are truly original and often ludic works that gesture honourably and sometimes insouciantly toward the literary traditions that Henry both refers to and shrewdly recasts. Even as Henry acknowledges that many of his words originated with others, he demonstrates the extraordinary alchemy that engaged and creative intertextual gestures allow—and the wonderful way in which fresh and beguiling contemporary poetry may emerge through inventive acts of homage.’ — Cassandra Atherton, author Prose Poetry: An Introduction (with Paul Hetherington); and Leftovers: Prose Poems.
DeWitt Henry is an American poet and novelist. He was the founding editor of Ploughshares literary magazine. His books include The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts (winner in the US of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel) and a trilogy in memoir including Sweet Dreams: A Family History (Hidden River, 2011) Safe Suicide: Narratives, Essays, and Meditations (Red Hen, 2008), and Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays (MadHat), which was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, 2022; and a collection of notes and essays, Sweet Marjoram (MadHat 2018). He has also edited several anthologies, including Fathering Daughters and Sorrow’s Company (both from Beacon Press). His first poetry collection, Restless for Words: Poems, will appear in late 2022 from Finishing Line Press. His work on Ploughshares was recognized by a Massachusetts Commonwealth Awards in the Arts, Humanities, and Interpretive Sciences in 1993. He has also received the Third Annual Editors Book Award from Pushcart Press and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. He is Professor Emeritus at Emerson College and serves as a contributing editor to both Woven Tale Press and Solstice magazines.
