Essay Question: Discuss Slessor’s use of imagery i at least three poems. Slessor’s complex poems use many types of imagery, his imagery is one of his artistic techniques which defines him from other poets in Australia. One could say that his powerful words paint a picture for the reader but as they say, seeing is believing. Slessor uses many types of imagery however death, time and water are the main ones. He uses these in his poems Night Ride, Out of Time, Five Bells and . Slessor in Night Ride talks about the journey of life, he talks of death as being slow, depressive and lonely.
He says, ‘Soon I shall look out into nothing but blackness’. This dark portrait of death is dark, fearful yet beautiful. In Out of Time, s lessor again about death. He say’s, ‘The gulls go down, the body dies and rots’. This literal image of death which one can not talk of it as being beautiful, quite the opposite actually. In Beach Burial however he paints a soldiers death.
Slessor says, ‘Enlisted on the other front’. The reader envisions this as if their soldiers were doomed before the battle, the ‘other front’ which he talks of is of course the afterlife. Later in the poem he says, ‘The convoys of dead soldiers come’. His use of the word convoy gives the audience a military type picture, but mental image is copious amounts of soldiers coming to their deaths. His imagery of time too is very important in his poems. In Night Ride, he talks about time as being slow but fast at times.
A train which the passengers are trying to catch up with is the metaphorical life journey. He says, ‘ Rushing rivers of bush outside’. These word paint a blurred vision of life which happens when time is moving quickly. In Out of Time, time is pictured as slow and painful. Slessor says, ‘Time flows like a hundred yachts’ the average reader sees this as being slow because yachts do not come very often and a the number a hundred is a large number too. Also time has a capital letter, this signifies the importance of the word.
Slessor says, ‘Leave this lovely moment at your back!’ . He means to leave the good times behind you and stop living with the good times and just keep going. Later Slessor says, ‘Time the bone knife’. This reference to time is very powerful, one thinks of the ‘bone knife’ as a long hard but sharp knife. Lastly, his image of water is one of the better images because Slessor’s poems have many links to water and especially the sea. In Out Of Time he refers a wave to time, as it washes over him.
Slessor says, ‘So Time, the wave, enfolds me in its bed’. The word ‘wave’ is used because of how wave crash over objects and smother them, his reference to bed is of his death bed. In Beach Burial, water has a close link with death. Slessor says, ‘ Washed their inscriptions’.
This is a re fence to death too, it has taken away the soldier’s identities. ‘Morning rolls them in the foam’, he says. This too has a close link with death, one could speculate that he refers to death being like a disease because ‘foam’ is associated with the disease rabies. One could also say that in Beach Burial water is between life and death, a kind of purgatory if you will. Slessor says, ‘They sway & w adder in the waters far under’. The bodies of the soldiers move with the tide waiting for someone to collect them.
Slessor who some people refer to as Australia’s best poet uses this powerful technique of imagery which defines him from other poets. This technique easy to read and understand but it is also deep and complex. The average person can read and understandSlessor’s poems. Poetry it seems is about describing and painting mental pictures for the reader, if this is so then Slessor is one of the great ist artists in australian history.