Part Pattern Whole: What Matters Most in Wopko Jensma’s Visual Poetry

Abstract

In this paper I discuss unpublished visual poems by Wopko Jensma alongside similar work from his last collection, I Must Show You My Clippings (1977). While Jensma is known as both an innovative writer and skilled artist and designer, it is the combined influences of these disciplines which make his visual poetry interesting. By placing these particular poems within global and local literary historical contexts, and situating their specific modes of signification within a theoretical framework, I explain the ways in which Jensma’s visual poems work as both semantic and semiotic texts.