Analysis – Imagery On William Street

Resource Description

Kenneth Slessor’s affectionate image of William Street in Sydney(1994, 48) is one example of a poem that invokes powerful sensory experiences of city life: The red globes of light, the liquor-green, The pulsing arrows and the running fire Spilt on the stones, go deeper than a stream; You find this ugly, I find it lovely. Ghosts’ trousers, like the dangle of hung men, In pawnshop-windows, bumping knee by knee, But none inside to suffer or condemn; You find this ugly, I find it lovely. Smells rich and rasping, smoke and fat and fish And puffs of paraffin that crimp the nose, Of grease that blesses onions with a hiss; You find it ugly, I find it lovely. 

The dips and molls, with flip and shiny gaze (Death at their elbows, hunger at their heels) Ranging the pavements of their pasturage; You find it ugly, I find it lovely. Strange & Hetherington Making the city otherwise 11 Slessor’s deft handling of imagery, which combines both the very familiar (‘Smells rich and rasping, smoke and fat and fish’) with a strange, almost bizarre re-imagining of the familiar (‘Ghosts’ trousers, like the dangle of hung men’) creates a strangely-lit image of William Street, due not only to the explicit lighting effects of the poem (the lurid ‘red globes’ and ‘liquor-green’ for example) but to the illumination afforded to William Street by the poem’s abundant and complex imagery.