Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone

The poem's title, “Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone,” foreshadows the poem's key thematic concern of mental and physical isolation. Interestingly, the ringing phone itself does not feature in the poem but constitutes a voluble absence. The “she” of the title is perhaps the speaker referencing themselves in the third person, which they never do in the poem’s body. This implies that the speaker is looking at themselves in a dissociated fashion, as if the self is a subject. The distancing device furthers the poem’s mood of isolation and solitude.

The image of the phone being allowed to go unanswered evokes the idea of passivity. The “she” of the title is in the house but does not pick up the phone. She may be too tired, too overwhelmed to answer the phone, or she may simply not be inclined to answer. But the unanswered phone foreshadows another theme, that of stalled communication, which crops up later in the poem in the form of the letters that do not reach the speaker.

The letters do not reach the speaker possibly because the postal service is impacted by the long winter. On the other hand, the phone is deliberately left unanswered.