Obstacles and Impediments by Mary Ann Sampson. OEOCO Press. LINK

This broadside to the left is a great visual example of total immersion. It was written and designed by Mary Ann Sampson for her poem Obstacles and Impediments. It fits into the “integrating display type” category of Kyle Schlesinger’s article, as well as total immersion. It’s a visual representation of the poem itself, while the lines of it are positioned to the left of the drawing. The kerning of the text stays consistent, while the tracking varies between the lines of text. It’s especially noticeable between the last line and the line with information about the poem. There’s a much larger space used to distinguish the information from the poem itself. There’s no standard alignment either, rather a more experimental alignment that outlines the image itself.

The juxtaposition of the text is one of the reasons this is total immersion. It traces the outline of the figure, showing the comparison of the two works and how they work together. There’s a sense of belonging between the two that wouldn’t be there if the text was placed away from the figure. The total immersion is also in the whole visual context of the broadside. The poem says “the word snag / rises / out of the blue void / swallowing / bit by bit by byte / these thoughts / words / we think / we have”. And that’s exactly what the image depicts; it’s an animal (the word snag) coming out of the ground to eat various letters. So the image acts as the text of the poem; and the typographic poem acts as an image because of the way it’s positioned on the paper. Overall it also shows how the two coincide and visually belong together, and it integrates the drawing in a useful and intriguing way.