Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone

“February Evening in New York” by Denise Levertov (1957)

Writing more than 40 years before Carson, American poet Denise Levertov takes a different view of February. In her poem, the month signals the end of winter and “[a] range / of open time at Winter’s outskirts” (Lines 22-23). The poem’s mood is festive, and it contains snatches of dialogue, in sharp contrast to the solitude and isolation explored in Carson’s poem.

“Summer Rice” by Linda Susan Jackson (2010)

American poet Linda Susan Jackson combines the theme of overbearing weather—here, the stifling Carolina summer—and the hard labor of enslaved people. The heat in the poem takes on a different punishing quality as it burns holes through the inadequate hats of people forced to toil under the sun. The searing summer heat becomes a symbol of people’s oppression.

“Wildly Constant” by Anne Carson (2016)

Taken from Float, Carson’s 2016 collection of poetry chapbooks, this poem shows the versatility of her work and her pastiche-like approach in action. While it shares with “Some Afternoons” an emphasis on visual imagery and the blurring of lines between self and nature, “Wildly Constant” is more discursive. It touches upon the letters of French writer Marcel Proust, the Latin name of a crow, and a honeymoon in Iceland, among other elements, to explore the theme of monogamy.