vispo

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A History of Poetry Comics

Notable / Recent Finds

At AHOPC we’re open to exploring the roots, influences, and parallel movements that inform poetry comics. These three notable / recent finds present poetry as art that’s sometimes outside the definition of poetry comics but still in the sphere of influence.

GLYPH by Naoko Fujimoto

Collage has been used by both visual artists and poets alike since it’s recognition as as art form in the early 20th century. Naoko Fujimoto uses collage to create what she calls “graphic poetry,” bringing in materials that thematically underscores their meaning. Her collection “GLYPH: graphic poetry = trans. sensory” (Tupelo Press, 2021) brings both the beauty and the power of collage to the intimacy of personal poetry. In the introduction Fujimoto writes, “I wanted my graphic poems to transport the viewer’s senses from paper, bridging the gap between words and images and their physical counterparts.” She uses found materials to create a base for her poetry, which is often handwritten, sometimes cut up, and always cascaded across her canvas. Her found materials include washi, origami paper, supermarket advertisements, gift wrap, postcards, and magazines among other materials. Among my favorite poems here are “Natane Rain Is,” “Greenhouse,” and “I Burn the Upright Piano.” This is a great addition to the graphic literature canon.

More often closer to Abstract Comics than Poetry Comics, David Lasky‘s “Manifesto Items #14: Postcard Comics” (2025) expands what can be done with the constraints of a structured format. Like fitting a sonnet into 14 lines or a haiku into 17 syllables, Lasky masters the postcard form to tell stories, illuminate poems, and expand our definnition of landscapes. He then mails them out, as he writes in the introduction, “to see if something small and precious could survive the machinery of the USPS and reach its destination.” His humor, wit (he goes meta in all the right ways), and color expertise are all on display here. For example, check out the raven’s attempt to correct Poe’s nevermore! Don’t wait to get your copy! Available here. ICYMI: I first mentioned Lasky’s “Lucky 13” a year ago in AHOPC #23. Lucky for us, he has reissued this 2023 sprawling collection of poems, comics, and poetry comics, adding some new ones and giving others more space. Full disclosure: David is my comics teacher and friend. We’ve co-curated exhibitions of haiku comics in 2024 and 2025 for art spaces in Washington and Oregon. And he’s the inspiration for this blog!

Letter of Intent by Nico Vassilakis

Visual poetry, as noted in AHOPC #28, is the direct descendent of concrete poetry. There’s a painterly feel to vispo that’s not always present in concrete. Poet Nico Vassilakis continues to explore and explode the power of letters to create (or should I say paint?) his poetry work “Letters of Intent” (Cyberwit.net, 2022). He notes this is “a collection of visual essays designed to explore the interior space of language material.” There’s humor (“Letters Are Escaping”); there’s instruction (“Ways To Begin”); there’s a nod to couplets (“Doubles”). The section “Opinions” sees messages emerging from the alphabet-primordial soup such as “letters are leaving these words,” “staring,” and “words are a crowd.” Like an abstract painting, I like taking my time when looking at each piece as different meanings emerge and submerge. Often layered like graffiti on graffiti, other times blended until just a color field remains, the work grabs your attention and creates wonder (a future language, perhaps?) for the reader/viewer.

Timeline: Current

Warning: This incomplete history maps my journey as a poet learning about comics and doesn’t follow a strict chronological order.

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Poetry Comics’ Intersection with Vispo

There’s a reason why borders, boundaries, and categorizations don’t work. Even with narrowly defined genres, movements, schools, etc. there are works that blur the edges and distinctions. Such is the case with visual poetry (vispo) and its intersection with poetry comics.

While definitely an oversimplication, here’s a Venn diagram that attempts to illustrate this point of overlap and influence:

Vispo grew directly out of the concrete poetry movement of the mid-1900s. (See AHOPC #10 for more on concrete poetry.) Definitions of vispo are as varied as its practicioners. Poet Nico Vassilakis in a 2014 inteview with BODY offers this way into understanding vispo:

Vispo is clearly a response to language. It tends to enhance the quantum aspects of language by focusing on the elemental design parts of language material. What’s that mean? People like fidgeting with alphabet.

The letter, itself, has been my point of interest.

Vispo is a response to reading and writing language. There is a connection between seeing writing and writing reading and reading seeing (hand-eye-brain).

–Nico Vassilakis

To locate the overlap between vispo and poetry comics, I turned to the volume “The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008” (Fantagraphics Books, 2012) edited by Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis. I found examples that hint (either directly or indirectly) at some aspect of poetry comics, such as sequential panels, comic books, speech bubbles, and hand lettering. I make the case these works exist in the intersection of vispo and poetry comics — regardless of how they’re categorized.

Closed Caption by damian lopes (The Last Vispo Anthology, No. 36). The poetry here is created in the interplay between speech/thought bubbles; the speech bubble, with a Lichtenstein looking eye, is having thoughts of its own, each more abstract. With the above we’re led to consider Pop Art as well as comics. Speech bubbles have a long history when pictures and words are used together and have become of one of the hallmarks of comics and graphic novels.
Languages & Isolation by Gustave Morin (The Last Vispo Anthology, No. 109). These two-panels allude to a sequential narrative, one definition of comics. To be sure we see this poem as sequential, the poet has the two panels overlap slightly. It makes me ponder how isolating languages can be for travelers, immigrants, and others. And I wonder what has been blacked out. Check out Morin’s “Toon Tune” on the Poetry Foundation website.
See by David Ostrem (The Last Vispo Antholoogy, No. 168). It’s easy to consider this work in terms of poetry comics; a little harder to explain why. The poet/artist includes faithfully drawn copies of three books, one being an opened Western comic book (easy). The word SEE is open to interpretation (harder). I take it as “notice this” — here are drawn pictures of books that are either about drawing or are drawn themselves.
Punctuation Funnies / Questionable Shadow by Gary Barwin (The Last Vispo Anthology, No. 221). I feel this work by Canadian poet/artist Gary Barwin definitely falls inside the shared space of vispo and poetry comics. It’s one of my favorite examples. Starting with calling these drawings “funnies,” then using the standard newspaper comic strip of four frames, and ending with a thought bubble, there’s little doubt they intended to evoke comics. The visual joke of the Questionable Shadow mirrors the kind of humor found in daily newspaper comic strips.
Cartoon0002 by Paul Lambert (The Last Vispo Anthology, No. 249). There’s something comic-book-ish about the lettering that hints at a connection with poetry comics. The shape of the frame and how the lettering reverses to create a kind of horizon line cause a comics feeling to arise. Again, it’s hard to put an exact finger on the reason, but what’s happening in this single frame results in something happening outside the frame, which in turn makes the reader/viewer imagine a second sequential frame and then perhaps a third.

Timeline: 2000s

Warning: This incomplete history maps my journey as a poet learning about comics and doesn’t follow a strict chronological order.