17 pages • 34-minute read
Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Carson’s 10-line lyric poem is written in unrhymed verse and does not follow a regular meter. There is a somewhat formal arrangement in the line lengths, with the longest lines bookending the poem and the shortest line falling somewhere in the middle. The poem’s opening line, “It is February. Ice is general. One notices different degrees of ice,” is repeated at the end, which is an example of repetition.
One of the unique features of the poem is that all the lines are end-stopped; Carson avoids enjambment, or the spilling over of a clause into the next line. Each line is complete and isolated from the other, conveying the sense of being snowed-in, toward which the poem is building. Spoken aloud, the end-stopped lines also convey a dispassionate, almost-sardonic tone, trying to reign in great agitation and emotion. A line as observational as “ice is general” (Line 1), for instance, belies the helplessness the speaker feels at a frozen world that has engulfed her. Through belying the despair, paradoxically, the line amplifies it.
The poem uses more repetition as well as alliteration to create a rhythmic effect. Lines 3 and 4 begin with the same word (“some”), while Lines 5 and 6 end with “shreds”: both examples of anaphora. “Stand” is repeated in Lines 7 and 8. Examples of alliteration, or repeated consonant sounds, are seen in phrases like “different degree” (Line 1), “some is smooth” (Line 4), and “[a]ll we wished for” (Line 6).
Metaphor
One of the characteristic features of “Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone” is the transition from one metaphor to another. What begins as a seemingly literal description of a common snowed-in landscape turns into a metaphor for isolation and an altered, depressed mental state. The ice becomes a metaphor for uncertainty, capable of tearing “[a]ll we wished for, to shreds” (Line 6). It is then implicitly compared to a wall, through which letters cannot come through, and then a blank page over which “not one stroke of a letter can stand” (Line 8).
The ice is also fire, since “what came through the world there—burns” (Line 9). While the ice itself is a metaphor for the speaker’s frozen inner landscape, many metaphors are used to capture the ideas associated with the ice: beauty, danger, nature’s overwhelming power.
The poem uses personification as well, through the image of the wind standing on the ice and “going thin” (Line 5). The ice being “smooth as a flank” (Line 2) is an explicit comparison and hence an example of a simile.
Imagery
Carson uses images that play on various senses, especially sight and sound, to build the atmosphere of a snowed-in landscape in winter. The ice, which is everywhere, is described as occurring in “different degrees” (Line 1). This immediately evokes the various manifestations of ice, familiar to anyone who has witnessed a long, snowy winter. Even for the reader who may not have experienced such a landscape, the phrase evokes the physical qualities of ice, its different textures and densities.
Next, the poet uses colors to show how the landscape is dominated by the various kinds of ice. “[B]lue white brown greyblack silver” (Line 2) describes the freshest snowfall to frost to ice, which has been muddied and hardened to black ice. The detailed attention to ice also conveys the speaker’s own state of mind: It preys on their psyche and overwhelms them.
The simile of the flank is a play on the sense of touch. The ice feels slippery as a steep side. It is so smooth and glassy nothing can stand on it. Sound imagery comes to the fore in the image of the wind that grows thin on ice. The allusion here is to the whistling or high-pitched sound of wind on an icy, windy day. The cold of the ice thins out the wind and makes it howl. To this the speaker adds the image of children trying to stand on slippery ice, an inherently perilous image. Thus, the sense of uncertainty around the already slippery ice is heightened.
Toward the end of the poem, the speaker describes the ice with an image related to the sensation of both touch and sight: “Blindingly—what came through the world there—burns” (Line 9). The ice is described as something incandescent that blinds and burns, much like the sun or fire. This evokes the familiar sensations of something being so cold it appears to burn the skin, and a source of light so blazing it stings the eye. Through both these sensorial associations, the poet conveys the idea that the ice is simply too extreme, too powerful, and too overwhelming to process. It depicts the dualistic beautiful and terrorizing aspects of nature. No wonder the speaker feels nearly frozen in its presence.
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