Group 4: Telephone Conversation

I AM SUPER SORRY FOR THE LATE UPLOAD.

SUBJECT MATTER

This poem is about a telephone conversation between the poet, who is an African man, and a white woman who was going to become his landlady and offer him a job. After hearing that the poet is actually an African, she plays ignorant and refuses to offer him a job

Title

Telephone conversations usually are friendly and not hostile and usually, the tones used in conversations are not so formal and not harsh. It has a sense of mystery to them as you may not know the opposite party. They start making unbased assumptions on each party without seeing them in real life. 

Purpose

This poem is meant to convey the extent of racism, prejudice and discrimination which white people possess against dark-skinned Africans. Even if an African had the best of qualities required for a job, a white would still not employ them due to their racial prejudice. This poem is an expression of grief and sadness to why an innocent race of the Africans should be suppressed by white people. Even in a simple, usually friendly phone conversation, racism is present and becomes, ironically, harsh and hostile. It is a clear example of the injustices of racism, prejudice and discrimination which society possesses.

Emotions

This poem conveys a certain sense of devastation, suppression and grief from the poet’s point of view.

CRAFTSMANSHIP

Structure

- The poem is a single stanza on its own without breaks. This shows that the telephone conversation was bery brief and very snappy.

- In the last line of the poem, it ends off with “see for yourself”. This shows a slight irony and juxtaposition to the title. Since in telephone conversations, people are unable to see the party on the opposite end, the poet stresses on how the white woman should “see for herself” the poet’s competence in the job he was to be offered instead of making unbased assumptions and prejudices based on skin colour.

Language

- In Line 6, “Silence” was a sentence on its own. This is to create the effect of a brief pause. This was probably to convey the idea of astoundment, shock and a possible anger and possession of superiority complex.

- In Line 12, the poet describes this telephone conversation as “public hide-and-speak”. This shows a certain irony as the term is usually “hide-and-seek” and is not usually a public affair. In this case, the poet did not want the woman to know that he was African and thus was “hiding”. However, it was over a public telephone call which makes his identity even more hidden.

- In Line 13, the repetition of “red” and of short sentences in “red booth”, “red pillar box” and ”red double-tiered Omnibus squelching tar” showed that it was a sort of mental list. Nothing had changed its state and in his shock,  thought that the white woman’s not offering him the job because of her racial prejudice was not real.

- The poet also said that the white lady’s assent was “clinical” showing that just like in a clininc, there is a lack of warmth and it is quiet and cold, which in this case is similar to the white lady’s assent.

Imagery

- In Line 7, the poet describes the white woman’s voice as “lipstick-coated”, and was “long-gold rolled cigarette-holder pipped”. This is a metaphor and it reflects on the white lady’s sophistication in juxtaposition (contrast) to the African poet. Instead, the poet was in a shabby telephone booth.

- The poet refers to the white woman putting the phone down on the receiver as “rearing it” on the “thunderclap” about “his ears”. Thunderclap refersto something loud and shocking. He did not want to hear that loud, dreaded and shock-inducing “thunderclap” as that would mean that he would not get the job and that to him, would have been very shocking and devastating.

Sound

- In the poem, the white landlady talks in a seemingly very harsh tone but very controlled. She probably was trying to suppress her anger and her emotions or of being overly crude. This is evident in how the poet cleverly uses capital letters to represent the white woman’s speech, instead of talking in normal upper and lower case like in a normal telephone conversation. Because she was racially-prejudiced, she was attempting to control her emotions of sounding overly crude and ruining her air of sophistication. Also, she later on says that shee “didn’t know” what “West African Sepia”  or “brunette” was,  and still convictedly and blatantly says that the poet is still a dark-skinned African no matter what shade.

Summary

To conclude, this poem tells others about the racial prejudice and discrimination which white people had shown to Africans. Even through a simple phone conversation, which is normally friendly and not hostile,it ironically becomes hostile and mocking. By the white landlady’s actions, such as the tone of her speech as seen in the passage, are in capital letters, it is evident that she is suppressing her emotions and maintaining her sophistication. She wanted to seem superior to the poet just because he was African and was dark-skinned. She does not even bother to meet the poet face to face, and makes unbased assumptions of him and refuses to employ him because of his race and skin colour, albeit not knowing his true ability and competence in the field of which the landlady is about to hire him in. Her abrupt ending of the call also clearly displays the extent of racial discrimination which she had. Therefore, all these evidences are able to clearly show that society had a great degree of racial discrimination and prejudice, such to the point that people disregard an individual’s working competence and abilities just because of his skin colour.

Group 3: One

Subject matter: The poet describes his individuality and how it is possible for others to imitate him.

Theme: Though other people can pretend to be you, each of us are still unique in our own ways, and have our own special identity.

Emotions: Haughty–”Hey, you can never be me!”

Group 5: Sheltered Garden

The poet wrote this poem to express her misery and to release her emotions. The poet personified herself as a fruit which is trapped inside a garden. The poet feels overprotected in this ‘garden’ and wants to escape this garden to see the real world which isn’t as perfect or safe as the ‘garden’ she is in now. The garden is like a place not as wild as places like the forest. Normally, the owner of the garden only puts plants which are attractive and safe to the people around. While nature has everything, wild flowers, carnivorous flowers and coarse weeds! The poem gives a sense of irritation and restlessness, the poet is impatient and long to get out of this garden. It is also slow-placed, sad and exasperated with life.

Title: The title is ironic. Gardens are usually located outdoors while shelters are usually a covered area.

Stanza 1:  Suffocating and trapped. She wants to be released from this ‘prison’. The short stanza is used to put more emphasis on the emotions.

Stanza 2:  Whatever route she tales, she still ends up at the same place.  It’s like going in circles. Life is like repeating itself, there’s no excitement.

Stanza 3: ”I have had enough” placed more emphasis on how sick she is of her life. She is tired of the nice quiet life and wants more thrill and adventure in her life as hers is very artificial. The colour pink was used as pink gives a feeling that it is artificial and for the rich, sheltered people.

Stanza 4: This stanza shows the world which she wants to be in which is far more dangerous and unpleasant as the world she is in.  She has no exposure to the outside world. She, as a ‘fruit’ is not exposed to other trees.

Stanza 5: A fruit is not supposed to be under a cover,wadded in cloth.  It is supposed to be exposed to nature. The owner does not know what the fruit truly wants, he just wants to protect the fruit, but ended up making it unhappy. The poet is covered, she ‘ cannot see the light’ and cannot see the world outside. She is stuck to her ‘garden’ seeing the same things everyday. 

yingjiao: The poem shows that she feels like dying.

Stanza 2:

I Am – group 2 =D

This poem is about a person whom no one cares or loves, forgotten and forsaken by his “friends”. He often feels melancholic but dos not know the source of his woes. He does not experience the love of relationships and lives in a world of insecurity and darkness as if in a shadow, with no particuar goal or aim in life. He seems to be in a never-ending pit where people just look down on him and despise him. And yet, he shows a sign of bravery and hope – “and yet I am!”".

There is a contradiction of “living sea” and “waking dreams”. The former refers to the people around him, who are merely a sea of people to him who are actually living, unlike him, who seems to be detached from his life. The latter, on the other hand, refers to the dreams he once had and still hopes to realise, even though, they now have “no sense of life nor joys” since he no longer thins he can realise those dreams. Instead, he is now in a pit all alone, his self-esteem crushed in a ‘vast shipwreck”. He finds his life experience – the things he loves best and holds dear stranger than the things he dis not value as much as he is detached from everything he once possesed in life.

He feels as though he is just watching as life passes by. He longs to venture into the unexplored and undiscovered places where no one has left their mark – where people haven’t lived or felt before. He has a desire to go to a place where he does not have to worry about the materialistic side of life and instead go back to the basics, or the bare essentials. The writer of this poem longs for solitary and tranquillity and is remininscent about his past, when people did not disturb him and he too did not disturb those around him – when he was happy-go-lucky without any problems of his own.

Presently, though, he appears to be dwelling in self-pity as he feels that he is no longer a part of his own life and he is simply watching on as his life passes by. It is as if he is in a world of his own, as inferred from where the grass is “above the vaulted sky” This gives the impression that there is another world where their ground level is above our sky level. Hence, this poem shows how the poet is detached from his own life as he watches it go by as if he is in another world of his own. He dwells in self-pity and struggles to retain his self-identity.

The Road Not Taken (Group6)

Subject Matter: Identity.

Purpose: To be original; to not go with the flow.

Emotion: Indecisiveness, courage, uncertainty and belief in the path chosen.

Craftsmanship-

Structure: 4 stanzas of 5 lines. Rhyming on lines A,C,D and B,E.

Language: Simple but impactful.

Imagery: Adequate amount of description to allow room for imagination and use of metaphor-undergrowth may represent the unknown.

Movement: The lack of description for movement in poem suggests the character’s uncertainty and process during which he makes a choice.

Sounds: Ryhming of the poem and the rhythm gives the poem a feeling of “travelling” and constantly keeps readers in the present, with no hints as to what’s going to happen in the future, so as to experience the emotions and thoughts with the character.

Synthesis: To encourage readers to be independent in decision-making, and to have confidence in one’s choice.

The Six Poems

Hey sorry, I should’ve posted this earlier. These are the poems I gave the different groups. Do have a look  at them first before you read the group’s analysis.

-miss mathew

1. The Man In The Bowler Hat

 

I am the unnoticed, the unnoticeable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke.
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom.

I am the man they call the nation’s backbone,
Who am boneless – playable catgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.

I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am the graph diagram,
Composite face.

I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining, bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round

 

A. S. J. Tessimond

2. I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
And e’en the dearest–that I loved the best–
Are strange–nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil’d or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below–above the vaulted sky.

John Clare

3. One

 

Only one of me

And nobody can get a second one

From a photocopy machine.

Nobody has the fingerprints I have.

Nobody can cry my tears, or laugh my laugh

Or have my expectancy when I wait.

But anybody can mimic my dance with my dog.

Anybody can howl how I sing out of tune.

And mirrors can she me multiplied

Many times, say, dressed up in red

Or dressed up in grey.

Nobody can get into my clothes for me

Or feel my fall for me, or do my running.

Nobody hears my music for me, either.

I am just this one.

Nobody else makes the words

I shape with sound, when I talk.

But anybody can act how I stutter in a rage.

Anybody can copy echoes I make.

And mirrors can show me multiplied

Many times, say, dressed up in green

Or dressed up in blue.

 

James Berry

 

4. “Telephone Conversation”

 

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned,

“I hate a wasted journey–I am African.”

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.

“HOW DARK?” . . . I had not misheard . . . “ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?” Button B, Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis–

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.

“You mean–like plain or milk chocolate?”

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,

I chose. “West African sepia”–and as afterthought,

“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding

“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”

“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see

The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet

Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused–

Foolishly, madam–by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black–One moment, madam!”–sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears–”Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather

See for yourself?”

 

Wole Soyinka

5. Sheltered Garden

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest–
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough–
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch–
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent–
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light–
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

 Hilda Doolittle

The Man in The Bowler Hat (group 1)

• The man is an average guy, questioning his existence
• Everyone’s too busy and hectic with work that they forgot about their unique personal identity
• They do not acknowledge him
• He has no identity and is not in contact with the outside world
• A play on words that hints that he is see through
• The colour is dull, implying that he is not exciting, not noticable
• He works very hard and in the end, does not have time to rest and relax
• He has no say in anything
• Everyone works together to contribute to society, but are recognised as a combined identity, not individually
• He is the kind which follows the flow
• He’s the support for many things
• He is easily dealt with
• People use him, he knows he is being used but does not voice it out, he does this to be safe
• He is stable but not contented
• He is a supporting backbone for things. Because he follows the flow, like a pebble in the sea, he does not have a sense of direction

first post!

A reminder to you that your first journal entries are due on Wed, 14th Jan. All entries on this wordpress must be grammatical, in proper English. Decide on a suitable format that your classmates will find easy to digest.

Thanks and happy blogging

-miss mathew

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