Giorno, John: - John Giorno (1936-2019) was a New York-based poet and performance artist and the founder of Giorno Poetry Systems. His own poetry collections include The American Book of the Dead, Balling Buddha, and Cancer in My Left Ball, and he established the Dial-A-Poem phone service. A longtime member of the Lower Manhattan art scene, Giorno was also an AIDS activist and Tibetan Buddhist whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, among other institutions.