Telephone Conversation

Soyinka’s one-stanza, free-verse poem begins with the speaker reflecting on the price and location in the first line. Only in the second line does the speaker refer to the landlady, implying that the speaker is seeking an apartment. Once he knows that she does not live in the building, the speaker feels that everything he wants is in place. There is only one issue left he feels the need to confess, something that typically would not be labeled a confession. Line 4 is when Soyinka introduces dialogue, which brings to life the title and situation of the poem: a telephone conversation. In Line 5, the speaker clearly states his confession, “I am African” (Line 5), which places him in a vulnerable state with the other caller. The next line allows for the landlady’s silent reaction with the repetition of the word “silence” (Line 6). Lines 7 and 8 bring the speaker’s perceptions of the landlady into focus, particularly her voice, which he imagines to be “lipstick coated” (Line 7) and encompassing a “gold-rolled” (Line 8) cigarette holder, implying her high status.

In Line 9, the speaker notes her strong tone of voice, which catches him off-guard. She asks him if he is “light or very dark” (Lines 10-11). Soyinka emphasizes her tone by capitalizing her dialogue in Lines 10 and 11. Starting in Line 11, he brings in his sensory awareness of what is around him, such as the “rancid breath” (Line 11) of being cramped in a public phone booth as well as the various shades of red around him that seem to suggest his location is England, such as the phone booth, pillar box, or mailbox, and the omnibus he hears screeching by him. This use of imagery seems to highlight the awkwardness her question has initiated between them. Soyinka plays on the term hide-and-seek, a fun children’s game, with the not-so-fun adult game he is playing in the phone booth, a metaphor for the entire exchange in the poem, which he coins “hide-and-speak” (Line 12).

The speaker notes his “ill-mannered silence” (Line 15) in not responding after a while, so he asks for clarification. He juxtaposes his rude silence with her “consideration” (Line 17) in rephrasing the question to “dark or very light” (Line 18). The speaker puts the question in his own words and compares it to “plain or milk chocolate” (Line 19). Her cold acceptance of his helpful simile disappoints him in Line 20. Soyinka uses the visual imagery of “wave-length adjusted” to suggest the speaker’s rephrasing of his color (Line 21). He changes his response to the more professional “West African sepia” (Line 22), confirmed on his passport. The metaphoric and alliterative phrases “silence for spectroscopic / flight of fancy” (Lines 23-24) suggest that the landlady is pondering all the possibilities of sepia, as spectroscopy is the study of color. Then, her tone sharpens again in Line 25 when she asks another question, further admitting in Line 26 that she does not know what sepia is.

The speaker brings in another simile in Line 26, comparing his color to “brunette” (Line 26). She asks in Line 27 if brunette is dark, with the speaker visually describing his color for her in the next several lines. He claims his face is brunette, but his palms and soles are “peroxide blond” (Line 30), a hyperbolic version of white. As he continues with his bodily description from here, the tense, ping-pong quality of the poem lightens with the spotlight on the speaker as if he is performing standup comedy. His use of verbal irony gives him a sense of power, overshadowing his earlier worries of politeness and self-confessions. He explains starting in Lines 30-31 how friction, another scientific term he uses in this poem to show his erudition, in the form of sitting down has caused his bottom to turn “raven back” (Line 32), a possible allusion to poet Edgar Allan Poe. After his routine, the speaker senses the landlady is going to hang up on him in Line 33. In his last attempt to get the apartment in Lines 34 and 35, he begs the landlady to consider seeing for herself, the seeing referring to his color, most likely the color of his bottom, continuing the joke until the very end.