Extract from Catalogue 234. Jonathan A. Hill, 2021. Art Books, Artists’ Books Book Arts and Bookworks.

80. Smith, Keith A. [From upper cover]: Back and Forth, Book Number 108.

An uncommon visual and interactive poem by the celebrated book artist Keith A. Smith (b. 1938), bound by the artist and printed offset in a numbered edition of 200, signed by the artist on the colophon page. As with Book 107, the intricate structure of overlapping text on each leaf requires repeated manipulation of the book and the pages.

Smith writes in his auto-bibliography 200 Books (2000), “[the] text is a poem written for my dying mother. I completed the poem and placed a unique binding on it in time for one of my final drives back and forth to visit her in the hospital, 500 miles from Rochester to Fort Wayne. It was a joy to see her beam that a book had been written just for her.”

*Smith, 200 Books (2000), pp. 190-91, reproduces the text of the poem.