Quality Street

Compare and contrast the portrayal of imagination in ‘The Power’ and ‘Quality Street’

In the two poems, ‘The Power’ and ‘Quality Street’ the main theme is imagination. Both poems show the vast power of imagination, both equally showing how destructive and negative the imagination can be in contrast with how constructive and positive the mind and imagination can be. Despite the constructive and positive images of imagination in ‘Quality street’, the destructive and negative aspect is much more prominent. This is similar in ‘The Power’ but not completely. In ‘The Power’ destructive images come from the speaker instructing the reader, using imperatives, what to imagine in order to show the power of imagination, further more, creating and

In this poem, the speaker looks though different shader of quality street wrappers as if they were a “camera replete with scrims and gels and tints”. As the speaker looks through the golden shaded wrapper, objects in the real world (without the wrapper) are turned luxurious and images of wealth are introduced. Everyday boring objects are transformed into positive images such as the rain being made a “legend” and a normal “cellphone” then being made out of gold. The golden wrapper turns a “council estate lustrous from the eyes electroplate” meaning that the estate has turned from possibly being a council estate to a estate plated with a shiny gold metal tint, turning the estate

The writer uses negative imagery such as “spectral blues” resulting in the feeling of terror and so the reader can see the scale of the destruction. This quotation also creates a tone of fear which continues though out this stanza. Farley uses plosive consonance of the letters B and I which which shows the scale of the fire. In the same show the scale of the fire, Farley uses the metaphor “Plume of black smoke high enough to stain the halls of clouds” meaning the fire is so vast that the smoke that there is so much thick smoke it it reaching the clouds in which heaven sits, this quotation further more being particularly emphasised further by a line break followed by a mid-line caesura after the word