Weird. In my long dissertation on where visual poetry fits in my taxonomy, I left out a major level of categories, the one in which I divide poetry into linguexpressive and plurexpressive poetry, the first containing nothing but words, the other using other modes of expression as well. So visual poetry is not a subcategory of poetry, but a subcategory of plurexpressive poetry–along with poetries like mathematical, sound and performance poetry. This is weird because this level of the system is the one I’ve worked the longest on and am proudest of. It’s also where conventional poetry “breaks down.”
Oh, the rationale for having this layer is that I believe the main difference between current poetries is that some are words only, some more than words. I consider the split into these two kinds of poetry, in fact, the one truly revolutionary occurrence in poetry since the split into formal verse and free verse. Same standard response: the new kind isn’t poetry. Yeah, that’s the way I respond to the alleged split of visual poetry into verbal visual poetry and averbal visual poetry. I would have the same response to music’s being said to split into auditory music and silent music. Sometimes it’s better to be reactionary than idiotic.