Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone

“Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone” is a 10-line unrhymed lyric poem by Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson. The poem was first published in the collection Decreation in 2005. An eclectic collection, Decreation contains short lyric poems as well as a screenplay and long prose passages. The thematic concern of the collection is examining and deconstructing the individual self. In “Some Afternoons,” this theme plays out through the self-effacing speaker and their identification with the wintry, icy landscape outside. The speaker describes being stuck in the month of February when ice dominates the landscape. The ice has such a profound effect on the speaker that the boundary between self and landscape begins to blur.

“Some Afternoons” can be regarded as a mid-career poem for Carson, whose publishing career began in 1986. The poem’s visual imagery, engagement with despair, and its subtle, open-ended metaphors are a staple of Carson’s writing style. Unlike many of her other poems, “Some Afternoons” does not contain allusions to Greek and Roman classics, or attempt the mode of pastiche. It can be regarded as a pure, standalone lyric, and in this, displays the versatility of Carson’s writing.

Poet Biography

Anne Carson is a poet, visual artist, essayist, translator, and classics scholar regarded as one of the most exciting poetic voices of the 21st century. Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson became interested in the classics in high school when a Latin teacher taught her ancient Greek during lunch break. Carson went on to earn a BA, MA, and PhD in classic literature from the University of Toronto. Her interest in Greek and Roman literature and mythology informs her work as a poet and essayist, as does her love for the visual arts. While Carson published her first book, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, in 1986, it was her poetry book Autobiography of Red (1998) that established her as a major poetic voice. The verse-novel is told in the reimagined voice of Greyon, a red monster from the Greek legend of Hercules.

Since then, Carson has published several volumes of poems, essays, and translations, including The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001), Decreation (2005), from which “Some Afternoons” is taken, Nox (2010), Red Doc> (the sequel to Autobiography of Red; 2013), and Float (2016). In 2001, Carson became the first woman to receive the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She is also the recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 and 2014, the McArthur Fellowship in 2000, as well as the Pushcart Prize in 1997. Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, translation, and writing at various universities, including Canada’s McGill University and, in the US, Princeton and the University of Michigan. She lives in Michigan with her husband, the artist Robert Currie.

Poem Text

Carson, Anne. “Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone.” 2005. Tumblr.

Summary

The poem’s unnamed first-person speaker notes that it is February, a month in which ice can be found everywhere. Because of the ubiquity of the ice, someone paying attention will be able to see its many different forms and colors. The colors of the ice range from blue to brown to silver to black to grey. Some bits of ice have crystallized around a piece of stone, others look dark, as if they were housing a shadow inside.

In places, the ice can be so smooth and slippery that standing on it is near-impossible. Even the wind seems to get torn to shreds near the smooth ice. If one does manage to stand on such ice, the ice would crack and present a dangerous situation. All one’s dreams would risk being cracked like the ice and perhaps fall through it into dangerous waters. Children cannot stand on such ice at all.

It is not just people; even letters cannot stand on the ice, nor can the post make its way through the snow. The strokes of the pen cannot make a letter on the blank paper. The ice is so dazzling it seems to blind and burn in its brightness. Whatever manages to make it from the outside world through the blinding ice burns on the way. The speaker concludes by noting again that it is February, the month where “ice is general” (Line 10), when one notices “different degrees of ice” (Line 10).