Poetry. African American Studies. A definitive review of the creative output by a significant African-American visual poet. Richard Kostelanetz writes in his intro: "Barely visible though Bill Keith's poetry has been so far, mark my prediction that it will be reprinted for as long as anthologies of experimental and/or African-American writings are made." Bill Keith was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1929. He is a painter, collagist, poet and photographer who studied with Charles Alston and Roy De Carava. He founded the Malcolm X Art Center, directing it until 1975. His books include Wingdom (Runaway Spoon), Spatialisme (Writers Forum), Op Poems (Writers Forum), Sphinx (Xexoxial Endarchy) and L' affaire du Labyrinthe (with Arrigo Lora-Totino, Left Hand Books, 2001). In 1991 he curated with Karl Kempton Visualog IV, an international exhibition of visual poetry. Most recently, his work has been included in Writing To Be Seen, an anthology of visual poetry (Light and Dust, 2002), and spiderta

William "Bill" Keith (January 20, 1929 - September 1, 2004) was an American artist who began his artistic life as a painter, but moved into photography and visual poetry. His visual poetry ran a full gamut from calligrams inspired by Apollinaire and other early 20th Century French poets to Lettrisme to the Minimalism and Op Art of the 1960s. As his work developed, he concentrated increasingly on African and African-American themes and sources. The development toward African roots and branches lead away from the Roman alphabet and more toward the store of iconography and symbolism from Egypt to South Africa to the American diaspora. As he progressed, he developed graphic techniques suggested by textiles, wood carvings, bronze casts, ceramics, and other indigenous arts. He built up rhythmic patterns through repetitions of graphic elements from sources as diverse as road signs and zebra stripes. Keith's work as a whole becomes a celebration of the adventures of African sources as they moved and interacted with the rest of the world. Individual works may initially seem merely decorative, but familiarity reveals a call to the kinetics and dynamics of celebration. Keith is survived by his twin sons, Antar and Tarik, to whom he dedicated his book Pictographs to.