“Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it 's perhaps far more terrible than it 's ever been” Angela Davis. Despite regulations and laws being passed, the absurdity of injustice being exposed, racism still continues to be ubiquitous, regardless of time and generation. The poems Still I Rise by Maya Angelou and Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka both convey the theme of prejudice and racism; with a clear and thorough message showing how unjust and unfair xenophobia is. While they both express the same problem, the poems have differences in structure, poetic techniques, audience, and lexis. Both poems were written in the 1960’s-1980’s, a period of great segregation, and Soyinka and Angelou were both primary victims of this racism. The poetic structure of both poems contrasts greatly, however, they both convey the same message and meaning. Telephone Conversation, while it mimics the structure of an actual telephone conversation, has a very disturbed flow due to the amount of punctuation that halts the flow of the reader’s thoughts. There is heavy use of caesura and hyphens; an example of this can be seen in the line “Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light [Second line] Impersonality. Rapidly…” Giving the impression of an awkward, stumbled conversation, leaving the reader with an air into the insight of the speakers mind. Whereas Still I Rise, a Lyric poem due to it extremely emotive nature, is very free