Kenneth Slessor's suite of poetry enhances the complexities of the human experience and he invites us to challenge our predetermined consumptions and asks his audience to question what it means to human. Slessor's dichotomous poem, 'William Street' is a clear representation of the experiences of living in an urban metropolis whilst observing into a different perspective. Slessor's 'Out of Time' delivers a revolutionary understanding of time passing by unnoticed, further assuring the audience is reconsidering the true power of time. The pair, comparatively, constructs a dynamic understanding of the experience of beauty co-existing in times of chaos. Ultimately, Slessor's poems propose a chance for the audience to reconsider their predetermined consumptions and with this reconsideration, look at the world in an alternate perspective whilst in the moment.
Kenneth Slessor’s dichotomous poem, 'William Street' represents individual human experience of living in an urban metropolis and enhances our attention to looking in another perspective. Modernism arose in response to destruction as a result of WWI, meaning that traditional values were disregarded and thought to be irrelevant. Slessor was influenced primarily on the combined impact of war and economic catastrophe. The four-quatrain poem encompasses the modernist ideals that Slessor adopted in the 1930s by depicting four distinct images about the street itself, focusing on both the sordid and hedonistic. Slessor uses elemental imagery in the first stanza to dismantle the demarcations between the man-made and the artificial features of the city, focusing on the hedonistic, 'the red globe light' and 'the liquor green' is a multifaceted motif of the vibrant lights and formidable energy, these characterize that the vices of drinking and engaging with sex work are the beating heart of the city. However, stanza two idolizes the sordid where the extensive use of death imagery to portray a phantom of death. The simile of 'Ghost trousers, like the dangle of hungmen.' reinforces this phantom being, haunting the city and driving it. Stanza fours use of colloquial language reinforces the sordid, “The dips and molls, with flip and shiny gaze” proposes an alternative view that from the first stanza's bright and flamboyant lights, thus showing both positions humans can be in living in the city. Slessor in 'William Street' aimed to explore the perspective of human subjectivity in the objective, further challenging and enhancing the audience's perception of living in a city.
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Slessor's representation of the transience of time in his redolent poem 'Out of Time' revolutionizes our understanding of life and time rushing by our consciousness into oblivion. Modernism in 'Out of Time' aimed to present consciousness, emotion and meaning of an individual's relationship with society. He focuses on the subjective means of representing his emotions, in that there is nothing absolute in the world. The retrospective narration Slessor uses throughout his poem such as 'saw' and 'thought' recalls from his individual human experience and represents 'time' as a collective human experience that goes by in the past, with conjunction to the individual perspective of 'I' this reinforces this subjective notion of his inner emotion of time passing into the oblivion. Slessor personifies 'Time' to give it a fuller life form. The pleading tone in 'Time, you must cry farewell' represents mans desire for this, now life-form, to leave him alone and let him live his life free of worry. Slessor's utilization of the form and structure in the poem, more specifically, the concluding rhyming couplet and its cyclic structure, represents the power dynamic between 'time' and the 'moment.' Furthermore, this represents man's immersion in the moment defeats time for this brief moment, the men 'let him go' and 'I and the moment laugh,' further proposing the dramatic conflict going against time. Therefore the conflict between 'time' and the 'moment' is clearly depicted as something that passes by individuals unnoticed, therefore challenging our assumptions about humans experiencing time in the moment. Allowing us to reconsider the true power of 'time.'
Exemplifying the capacity for beauty to co-exist during times of chaos as well, Slessor's poem, 'Out of time', and, 'William Street', both allow for or an enhancement in our understanding of these experiences to take place. 'William Street' formally addresses the coexistence of beauty in chaotic times in the constant refrain used after the end of each image, 'you find this ugly, I find it lovely.' highlighting the ultimate contrasting perspective individuals have on 'the cross.' Additionally, it provides a literal paradox in the refrain, in that the beauty coexists in the individual rather than where chaos is set in the mind of another individual. Moreover, 'Out of Time' additionally illustrates the beauty of the moment, in comparison to the lust for life in the future. Identified in Slessor's reclamation of 'time leaves this lovely moment in his back,'- where time allows for the beauty experienced in the moment to linger with him whilst time continues to take its toll. Furthermore, Slessor adds 'The gulls go down, the body dies and rots,
And Time flows past them like a hundred yachts.' This rhyming couplet symbolizes the sense of death, and that time continues to prosper after we die, but the only thing to divert us from realizing this impending doom is grasping onto memories made in the moment. Therefore the co-existence of beauty in times of chaos is manifested in both 'Out of Time' and 'William Street' to enhance the anomalies in life, to also show that immersion in the moment allows for a diminished power of Time, all overarchingly evident on perspective and where to look.
Ultimately, Slessor's poems 'Out of Time' and 'William Street' both contribute to the overarching idea of challenging our predetermined assumptions, he invites the audience to grasp an alternative perspective in establishing new assumptions on the dynamic world around them whilst immersed in the moment.
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