Stalking the Minotaur: Selected Works of Bill Keith
Koja Press; 1113 Ocean View Ave. / Brooklyn, New York 11235 / 2003
Bill Keith's visual poetry has ranged widely over at least three decades.
During that time, it has been delightful, interesting, and informative to
see how he has pulled new dimensions into it, and how he has made the
work of other poets and genres his own. His previous books have tended
to settle on specific techniques or themes. These chart patterns of
evolution and growth which distinguish him from many lesser visual poets
who find a catchy formula and stick to it.
His Pictographs series, for instance, makes a great synthesis of
genres and forms. Starting from a solid base in African iconography,
Keith works through other forms, including the collective store of images
from many primary cultures and from our own. Textile patterns make up part
of the African base of many poems, and this can be seen in poems where
Egyptian papyrus becomes something like a cloth when enlarged, and in
poems where a series of exclamation points become a fabric that rhymes
precisely with a zebra's markings. An abstract photocopied distortion
from an unknown, and perhaps unknowable, source can in similar manner
make a provocative answer to a collage strongly influenced by Lettrisme.
Given the nature of his earliest work, closely associated with
simple concrete, moving quickly enough into a take on Op-Art which made
the pieces opulent as well as optical, his moves into new areas make new
books surprises for readers to look forward to receiving. The present
selection seems particularly interesting in his continued evolution of
takes on other artists and genres, Keith's usual inventiveness, and,
particularly, his further development of poems that explore strategies
for page-kinnetics. This dimension of the work in the present book
takes ideas from the Op-Art pieces and carries them into an exploration
of movement in rectilinear forms. It seems likely that this comes about
in part as collaboration with his editor, Igor Satanovsky. The poems
move through permutations over page sequences which vary from continuous
to episodic. One line of development features thin columns of letters
tipped at various angles to create dynamic imbalances and eccentric
rhythms. Another set of episodes work out from bases in modular poems
such as those found in classic Concrete - initially forming geometric
patterns, but moving into something else by superimposition and the
absorption of curved letters and pseudo-letters. Yet another series takes
its base in internally radiant square forms deployed in grids. The first
seem homages to Karl Kempton, who used this strategy extensively. These
become most interesting in later variations where Keith superimposes
radiant grids, creating something like moire patterns which give the images
a vibrant quality. Others based in Lettriste models (or in Latin American
poems influenced by Lettrisme) interact with varieties of repetitive stamps
and seals. Beginning early enough in the book, running as cousins of the
linear columns, Keith begins a series of serpentine poems based on African
images and African themes. These inform and reshape the other poems in
the book. The fluidity of these poems suggests an African alternative
to North Atlantic linearity. Keith closes the book with a set of
verbal meditations on rhythm, giving a retrospective key to the book
as a whole. One of my own concerns has been with the strategies for
exploring rhythm in visual poetry, as often as not through means of
varying the possibilities of reading speeds, and displaying text and
words in non-standard orders. Each poem has its own space, its own
dance, its own games, its own conceits and resonances. The book as a
complete entity, however, weaves the rhythms of cultures into a
fluid yet stately dance, inviting people with different backgrounds
and orientations to share their abilities and achievements, and to
see where they can take them from that meeting point.