English poem review
Poems to study:
• The Telephone Call
• A Consumer’s Report
• Request To a Year
• Funeral blues
• On a small fly crushed in a book
The Telephone call:
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/TheTelephoneCall-Poem.pdf
How does Adcock make the telephone conversation in The Telephone Call so vivid for you?:
Hope and disappointment:
Intro: In "The Telephone Call," a group of mysterious callers claims that the speaker has won
the lottery and become a millionaire. The speaker is skeptical, since they haven't entered a
lottery recently, but they display some joy and hope even as they question the callers.
Eventually, the callers admit it's all a hoax; instead of "money," they explain, they provide
"Experiences," and they've given the speaker a memorable one. By this time, the speaker has
fallen for the fantasy just enough to make the reality a bitter anticlimax. The poem illustrates,
then, how easy it is to give into unrealistic hopes—and how doing so can make inevitable
disappointment all the more crushing.
Even though the speaker suspects their amazing luck is too good to be true, they get partly
swept up in hope—and correspondingly disappointed. On hearing that they've won "the top
prize" in the lottery, the speaker's first response is, "I just… I can’t believe it!" The stammering
exclamation suggests they're already feeling happy, even if skepticism prevents them from
being overjoyed. When the callers urge the speaker to "giv[e] way to your emotions," the
speaker gets choked up and feels as if they might "cry." Throughout the call, the speaker
remains a little doubtful—"I'll believe it when I see the cheque"—so when there turns out to be
no cheque, they're at least partly prepared. Yet joy has started to overtake their rational
doubts. The fact that they indulge in some irrational hope shows that even skeptics are liable to
do so.
The poem casts this cycle of guarded hope and predictable disappointment as universal: part of
the "experience" all humans share. When the speaker's initial reaction is "I can't believe it!" the
callers reply, "That's what they all say." This might suggest that it's common to distrust amazing
news, since most people know firsthand that such news is often false. But "I can't believe it!" is
,also a joyous exclamation that betrays some desire to believe—and this, too, is part of human
nature.
Similarly, the hoaxers claim that the speaker must have entered a lottery sometime: "Nearly
everyone’s bought a ticket / In some lottery or another, / Once at least." Metaphorically, this
claim implies that we all indulge wild hopes at some point, and can feel stung by their failure to
come true even when we're no longer young and optimistic. The company's name, "Universal
Lotteries," hints at this same idea. The callers even say, "We're Universal," as if implying that
everyone goes through the roller coaster of hope at some point.
Illusions vs experience:
After revealing that the speaker hasn't won any money in the lottery, the callers in "The
Telephone Call" claim that the real "prize" was "a great experience." This phrase evokes an age-
old literary theme: the journey from ignorance, innocence, or illusion to experience, as in hard-
won wisdom. In this case, however, experience is such an obviously anticlimatic "prize"
(compared to the riches originally promised) that the poem ends up mocking its value.
Experience, the poem implies, isn't inherently "great"; some illusions are even preferable to
harsh lessons and painful memories.
Although the speaker never quite falls for the illusory lottery news, even their cautious hope
clearly improves their mood. When asked to describe their emotions, the speaker feels as if
their head has flown off "like a flying saucer," and the callers reply, "That’s unusual." The news
makes the speaker feel something remarkable, even if it's not full-blown euphoria. The callers
then encourage the speaker to emote more, explaining: "It isn’t every day you hear / You’re
going to get a million pounds." The speaker won't be getting that money, but just "hear[ing]"
they will—just the brief illusion—has the power to produce an emotional high. In fact, while the
speaker's better judgement continues to nag at them, they start to feel some giddiness ("that's
incredible [...] It's marvelous") mixed in with their doubts.
The irony is clear: whatever innocent "Excit[ement]" the speaker may have felt has now been
ruined by reality. And no one actually enjoys "remember[ing]" a major letdown! The "prize" of
"experience" is not only far worse than a million pounds, it's worse than the speaker's
unassuming pre-phone-call state. Rather than share their feelings about their supposed prize,
the speaker says nothing to the callers, then flatly reports, "the line went dead."
Metaphorically, this detail may suggest that their emotions have gone dead: whatever
happiness they were feeling has evaporated. Experience hasn't left them happier or wiser, just
numb and silent (the poem ends here).
Cruel as the letdown is, it's also, in a sense, perfectly ordinary. The disappointed speaker is no
worse off financially than they were before the phone call and no worse off than millions of
lottery losers. For most people, not winning the lottery—literally or metaphorically—is an
"every day" event, even if they don't get the news via telephone! In that sense, the speaker's
harsh "experience" is just a heightened or allegorical version of normal human experience.
, In short, the poem's closing ironies show that "experience" has no inherent positive value.
Though the callers chirp, "Have a nice day!" it's clear that the speaker's day would have been
better without this "experience." If anything, the "Call" calls attention to the relative poverty of
a life the speaker had been basically content with. (They mention that they "[hadn't] bought a
lottery ticket / for years and years.") Even when experiences are memorable, they can be
disappointing and deadening.
The opening of "The Telephone Call" grabs the reader's attention by jumping right into a
dialogue. All but the last words of the poem will consist of a conversation between the callers,
who identify themselves as "Universal Lotteries," and an unidentified speaker. As in fiction and
other prose narratives, the dialogue in this narrative poem serves multiple purposes: it propels
the story forward, provides exposition, and illustrates the personalities of the characters
speaking.
There's no initial scene-setting, so it's not clear where the speaker is receiving this call.
However, given the nature of the call (a notification about supposed lottery winnings), a home
setting is likely. The pronoun "They" may indicate that there are multiple callers on the other
end—a faux prize committee, perhaps—or "They" may refer to "Universal Lotteries" as a
collective, to a single caller whose gender isn't known/revealed, etc. (This guide will refer to
callers in the plural.)
The callers begin by asking if the speaker is sitting down—a common way of prefacing big news.
(Presumably, the recipient of the news will need to steady themselves for a shock.) After
identifying themselves as a lottery company, the callers claim that the speaker has won their
"top prize," called "the Ultra-Super Global Special." Both "Universal" and "Global Special"
suggest that this is a large, international company and that the speaker has won a huge prize
out of a large field of participants—in other words, the speaker has truly hit the jackpot.
These names will gain other implications, too, as the poem goes on. Since lotteries are symbols
of chance and fortune, "Universal Lotteries" may suggest that the company symbolizes the
cosmic workings of fate itself. The name may also hint that there's something "universally"
relatable about the experience they give the speaker: a surge of hope followed by
disappointment.
A Consumer’s Report:
