I can't place an individual visual poem at a particular point upon a single continuum. A visual poem requires evaluation from a number of perspectives at once. If I were to design a structure to quantify the defining characteristics of a visual poem, it would be similar to a mixing board and include at least three input channels working in concert with and in opposition to each other.

The left-hand bar would measure the visual aspect of the poem: the top of this bar would indicate a fully visual poem, and the bottom would designate a barely visual poem. At the top end, we might have a poem by mIEKAL aND wherein an image (a photograph or a drawing, say) dominates the mise en page; there will certainly be textual content, but it is fully encased in an image. Poems at the low end might include very simple concrete poems that depend on a single visual effect, such as the hollow block of text that makes up Eugen Gomringer's "silencio."

On the right-hand bar, we would measure the verbal content of the poem, which would move from the fully verbal to the barely textual. At the top end, we would have work like George Herbert's "Easter Wings," which consists of perfectly syntactic lines of traditional poetic language. At the bottom end, we would have works like the later copy art poems of Bob Cobbing in which textual content is so diminished that the poems don't even suggest a word and might include only a portion of an individual letter, itself almost totally obscured.

The middle bar would measure the degree of integration of the visual and the verbal. A knob resting at the top of this line would indicate perfect integration; in such a case, there would be no way to separate the visual from the verbal: the text of the poem would also be the visual element of the poem. Counterintuitively enough, I believe that the simplest concrete poems are always fully integrated because their verbal elements are also their only visual elements. Visual poems that use the structure of comics (panels, tiers, captions, word balloons, etc.) generally isolate the visual from the verbal. We see a similar pattern of separation in poems that emulate ancient emblem poems, presenting a superior image upon a spatially inferior text. Each part of the poem interacts with the other, yet each remains in its distinct region of the page.

The poets you mention in your question require us to slide the knobs of the mixing board into different configurations. Basinski usually creates fully visual, fully verbal works that are totally integrated. The current work of aND and Topel tends to be fully integrated and visual but only minimally textual. Bennett's work is always fully textual (though intentionally difficult to read), but the visual element varies over the continuum as does the integration of the two aspects. The work of Bee and Bernstein, taking, for instance, their joint "Log Rhythms," includes unmistakable visual elements, but the works are so insistently verbal, and the visual and verbal elements so unintegrated (to my eye), that some people would consider these illustrated poems rather than visual poems. Bernstein's solo work in the verbo-visual arena tends to continue the verbal preeminence seen in his collaborative work with Bee, but it is also more fully integrated even as (or, probably, because) it generally eschews the inclusion of separable images.

So where does my work fall within the sliding knobs of this mixing board? I hope everywhere; I hope in as many combinations as possible. I have certainly never abandoned the practice of concrete poetry, which is a less intensely visual form of visual poetry. But most of my current work is not at all concrete in structure. The majority of my output these days is fidgetglyphs, small handwrought visual poems that often include my own drawings (as in "mouse"). I enjoy the visual aspect of text itself, so I create typographic poems where the text is the only visual element but is insistently so (as in textured, full-color, and textually manipulated poems like "The Drunken e" or "o'face"). Many of my poems, especially my calligraphic poems, are essentially averbal though fully textual, including "The Roots of Yggdrasil within the River Styx."

Sometimes, I do include images in my poems: in collage poems ("not Bronx"), poster poems (my anti-war poem, "My death is just," or haiga ("a pebble drops"). Many of my poems are physical entities, like my geospatial poems (the snowglyph, "fis sure," and the sandglyph, "Wreed") or my semiobject collections (like the woords, in which the text decorates pieces of bark and the whole collection appears within a Petri dish).

My visual poetry is often, though not always, more verbal than concrete poetry (incorporating syntax into the poems) and more dynamically visual (depending on modulated color, free-form shape, etc.). In my work as a whole, though, the verbal predominates over the visual and my usual methodology is minimalist. These last two are features of classic concrete poetry and good reasons why people recognize the influence of concrete poetry in my work. My only concern with the concrete character of some of my visual poetry is that this may cause people to see my work as retrograde and unaffected by methods and trends in visual poetry since the 1970s. I consciously try to counter this view by mining the entire history of visual poetry for inspiration, but even I see my visual poetry as less insistently visual and more verbal than most work produced today.