Where the Sidewalk Ends
One of the stranger aspects of imagery as it relates to the book has to do with the title poem and a 1950 film noir with which the book shares its title. The movie is a gritty black and white film about a corrupt cop in the big city which opens with its title scrawled in chalk on an urban sidewalk. Although there is little to indicate that Silverstein was inspired by the film to give the same title to his book and though no other connection is evident, the title poem contains imagery which could come right out of a film noir:
“Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
….
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”
Illustrative Imagery
Shel Silverstein did not just compose the poetry that serves as the text of his book; he also drew the illustrations which accompany them. In many cases the two are almost inseparable as imagery. For instance, the line
“This started out as a
jumping rope”
makes less sense with not situated next to the drawing of the poem’s speaker trapped inside the rope like a fly caught in a spider web. Likewise, the poem titled and about “Invisible Boy” loses some of its impact without the addition of an empty white square placed above it. And, of course, the punchline of “The Planet of Mars” which informs the reader that its inhabitants have head and faces just like us, only not in the same places would be completely lost without the image of a man with nothing above his shoulders and a head conspicuously sticking out from where the human behind is situated.
Word Art
A few poems create imagery through the artistic placement of words. “A Poem on the Neck of a Running of Giraffe” is example of imagery so dependent on the inextricable combination of word and illustration as to be impossible to duplicate here: the words themselves are constructed to actually form the long neck of the title animal. More easily extricated—but not done so for the purpose of saving space—is the imagery utilized in the poem “Lazy Jane” in which every single one of the nearly 30 words comprising the poem are stacked one on top of the other to create a column of verse hovering over the prostrate title character. This dual imagery conveys the extent to which Jane is lazy: too much so to bother with either sitting up or putting the words of the poem describing her into some kind of normal order.
The Humorous Twist Ending
One of the reasons for the persistent popularity of this book of poems with children is likely the fact that so many of them end with an unexpected comical twist. This motif recurs often enough—without making it a standard element of every poem—that the repetition serves to make it an example of imagery which serves to stimulate an emotional response in the reader; in this case a kind of indefinable delight at being fooled or misled and then made to laugh as this misdirection. Consider, for example, how the unexpected twist in the poem “The Battle” works to undermine conventional expectations and stimulate a specific response:
“Would you like to hear
Of the terrible night!
When I bravely fought the—
No?
All right.”
