Richard Kostelanetz

Richard Kostelanetz, in full Richard Cory Kostelanetz, (born May 14, 1940, New York, New York, U.S.), American writer, artist, critic, and editor of the avant-garde whose work spans many fields.

Kostelanetz attended Brown University (B.A., 1962), Columbia University (M.A., 1966), and King’s College, London. He served as visiting professor or guest artist at a variety of institutions and lectured widely.

In 1971, employing a radically formalist approach, Kostelanetz produced the novel In the Beginning, which consists of the alphabet, in single- and double-letter combinations, unfolding over 30 pages. Most of his other literary work, often printed in limited editions at small presses, also challenges the reader in unconventional ways. Kostelanetz’s nonfiction work The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America (1974) charged the New York literary and publishing establishment with inhibiting the publishing and promotion of works by innovative younger authors. His “visual poetry” consists of arrangements of words on a page, using such devices as linking language and sequence, punning, alliteration, and parallelism to achieve effects that resonate with broader artistic movements such as Constructivism and Minimalism.

Among his literary contemporaries, Richard Kostelanetz has also produced literature in audio, video, holography, prints, book-art, computer-based installations, among other new media. Though he coined the term "polyartist" to characterize people who excel at two or more nonadjacent arts, he considers that, since nearly all his creative work incorporates language or literary forms, it represents Writing reflecting polyartistry. "Wordsand" (1978–81) was a traveling early retrospective of his work in several media.