Discuss the poet's experience with the lady in the poem telephone conversation?
Answers
Answer:
The poet, or the poetic persona if not the poet's self, is telephoning about renting a flat in England ("public hide-and-speak. / Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered / Omnibus") and to save himself the agony of a trip that ends with the disappointment of being rejected on the basis of his race, he says, "“I hate a wasted journey—I am African.”
The silence--probably expected--that greets the poetic persona makes him feel "caught"--foully caught, as though for a crime--by the pressure of civil though distanced response:
Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.
The last three stanzas are devoted to the shame inducing queries ("Shamed / By ill-mannered silence, surrender / ... / to beg") of the anonymous "Lipstick coated" woman on the other end of the phone to qualify his skin color: "HOW DARK?" The poetic persona then says that, beneath the "crushing" attitude, silence and questions, he replied that he was "West African sepia," a reply that of course needed more clarification, a clarification that ends with the poetic persona describing his "peroxide blonde" and "raven black" bodily portions and pleading amidst a "thunderclap / About [his] ears":
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Answer:
Simply put, the narrator in Soyinka's "telephone conversation" is looking for a place to live—that is the "experience." This experience is tainted by his foreknowledge that the color of his skin is likely to be a problem for his prospective landlady.
The poem emphasizes the ridiculousness of racial prejudice by means of the very strange question that is asked by the woman on the other end of the phone. Upon the narrator revealing that he is black, the woman showcases her aversion to dark skin by asking if he was "light or very dark.
In response, the narrator explains to readers of the poem that his body is not monochrome—that some parts of him, such as the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet—are far "whiter" than other parts of him.