Due to the time constraints of the letterpress workshop, groups could not typeset more than a line or two from their text of choice. While the selected excerpt might have been a nice stand-alone sentence or a small analog of the text’s content, it could not provide a full and robust picture of the work. There is something necessarily lost in reduction. In my group, the subsequent illumination picked up the slack and fleshed out the neglected elements of the piece. We settled upon an illustration that would not only augment our printed words, but also expound on the topic presented in the poem we chose. In this sense, we unified the literary and artistic elements of our manuscript – the result being a harmonious multi-media argument.
We have seen a similar coalescence of the verbal and non-verbal in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence & Experience”. Granted, Blake published entire poems, but he considered the implications of his words and wrought illustrations that would echo the motifs of the poem. For instance, Janelle Schwartz drew our attention to The Sick Rose, which was framed by circular boughs and flowers. Essentially every element of the art could be plausibly interpreted as significant to the meaning of the poem.
Consequently, the reader is moved not only the power of the words, but the aggregate of the visual elements of the page. This creates a considerably more immersive experience.
