Analysis of the poem The Telephone by Edward Field

Although the telephone is a technical device, the speaker imbues it with warmth because it transmits love and friendship through its lines and receiver. His feelings, reflective of many in a time when there was no other technology for personal communication, are expressive of his delight in being able to hear the voices of friends or his lover. With the telephone he can feel connected to his loved ones and thereby overcome the anonymity of subways and buses where people do not converse, but act as automatons. Without the telephone, he feels isolated, like "a bear in a cave." He awaits with eagerness the "spring" that the telephone brings him in the "shadowy winter" of his urban isolation.