Each individual kinetic visual poem also establishes an attitude for itself, an identity, a position / arrangement in space, as does any hypertext work. This part versus whole issue is relevant to print poetry, in the sense that many poets and/or poetry critics feel each line of poetry must be able to stand on its own as an accomplished combination of words, poetry in and of itself. In this respect, poetry slides easily into the hypertext mannerism.

One of the major factors in this differentiation is the "look and feel" of the work, a term that is often used in the web design field. For poetry, this idea is especially important. In print poetry, each word is a part of the poem for a reason--sound and rhythm along with flow of the poem are taken into account. In new media kinetic poetry, each aspect of the atmosphere is just as important. The poem is not just the words; the images, animations, background colors, and links also. For example, Tim McLaughlin's "Birds of Good omen for Sandra" distinguishes itself by the vertical line of seagulls, wings outstretched, that line the left hand side of the screen on a gray background that fades into a weaving.

Therefore, even though a work is part of a collection of works or has a link that is programmed to lead to a random web site each time it is clicked, it is complete on its own, an entity in and of itself, full, a whole. It is also a hole--when it is presented on its own it presents what is missing, what is not at that moment part of the unseen or hidden body of work.