Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Calling Him Back from Layoff" is a poignant, deeply empathetic meditation on economic insecurity, human connection, and the unsettling ripple effects of both relief and deprivation. Through an understated yet powerful narrative, the poem explores the act of calling a man back to work after a layoff—an act that, while momentous for one, carries the weight of systemic fragility for many others. Hicok captures the quiet devastation of labor uncertainty, the small but profound moments in which people’s fates turn on the simplest of words, and the guilt inherent in choosing who gets to eat and who does not.

The poem opens with an interaction so mundane that it becomes almost surreal in its ordinariness: “I called a man today. After he said / hello and I said hello came a pause / during which it would have been / confusing to say hello again.” This moment of awkward hesitation mirrors the tension inherent in the call itself—the speaker has news that will profoundly affect this man’s life, yet the conventions of conversation demand an initial exchange of pleasantries. The weight of what is coming sits in that pause, in the hesitation before a life-altering sentence.

The conversation unfolds in its usual script: “so I said / how are you doing and guess what, he said / fine and wondered aloud how I was / and it turns out I’m OK.” This ritualistic back-and-forth, though reflexive, highlights a stark contrast: the speaker, presumably secure in employment, is “OK”, while the man receiving the call does not yet know that his life is about to change. The word "fine" carries the hollow ring of politeness—it is the answer we give even when we are struggling, even when we are not fine at all.

The poem then shifts into the visual, painting a picture of the man’s life at the moment of the call: “He / was on the couch watching cars / painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars / painted with ads for Tide around an oval.” The detail of watching NASCAR—a sport both beloved and critiqued for its repetition—becomes a bleak metaphor: the cars go in endless loops, their meaning subsumed by corporate branding, much like the cycles of economic boom and bust that leave workers in a constant state of precariousness. The comparison is explicit: “that’s a metaphor for life because / most of us run out of gas and settle / for getting drunk in the stands.” Here, the endless circuit of the race, the inevitability of running out of fuel, and the resignation of those watching from the sidelines allude to a larger societal condition—one in which people are trapped in cycles of work, exhaustion, and survival, often without real agency.

Then comes the moment of revelation: “I said / he could have his job back.” The brevity of this statement is striking—no embellishment, no explanation, just the bare fact of reinstatement. This is followed by another pause, this one filled with raw physicality: “his whiskers / scrubbed the mouthpiece clean / and his breath passed in and out / in the tidal fashion popular / with mammals.” The description is humorous in its phrasing (“popular with mammals”), but it also slows the moment down, making us feel the weight of his response before he even speaks. Breath, so often taken for granted, becomes significant—it is an indicator of life, of holding on, of waiting for news that will determine whether hunger continues or ends.

When he finally speaks, the words burst out: “how soon thank you / ohmyGod.” The lack of punctuation mimics the rush of emotion, the relief collapsing into one breathless phrase. Hicok describes this as “one long word as one hard prayer / of relief meant to be heard / by the sky.” The use of prayer elevates the moment to something almost sacred, emphasizing the sheer desperation behind it. This is not just gratitude; it is a plea finally answered, a shift from uncertainty to survival.

Yet even in this moment of relief, the conversation turns painful: “When he began to cry I tried / with the shape of my silence to say / I understood.” The speaker, though sympathetic, is helpless in the face of raw human suffering. Silence, while intended as an act of understanding, feels inadequate against the weight of “each confession / of fear and poverty.” The phrase “more awkward / than what you learn in the shower” suggests that witnessing vulnerability—especially that of another man in a culture that often discourages such expressions—is deeply uncomfortable, revealing the limits of empathy in the face of structural despair.

After the call ends, the speaker is left alone with the consequences of what he has done—not just for this one man, but for others who will remain unemployed: “if I give a job to one stomach other / forks are naked.” The imagery is stark—giving one person the ability to eat means that others will still go hungry. This is the brutal logic of economic scarcity, the realization that for every person who gets pulled from layoff, others remain trapped in uncertainty.

The final lines return to the theme of interconnectedness, questioning whether the relief of one man reverberates beyond his own kitchen: “if tonight a steak / sizzles in his kitchen do the seven / other people staring at their phones / hear?” This is the central tension of the poem—whether good fortune for one can be felt by others, whether the alleviation of suffering is communal or merely isolated. The image of “seven other people staring at their phones” evokes the loneliness of economic precarity, of waiting for a call that might never come, of being tethered to hope by a fragile thread.

Hicok’s "Calling Him Back from Layoff" is, at its core, a meditation on power, guilt, and the uneven distribution of grace. The speaker, in a position to grant or withhold employment, wields a quiet but immense authority, and the burden of that decision lingers even after the call ends. The poem acknowledges the profound impact of small bureaucratic acts—how a simple phone call can shift a person’s entire existence, yet fail to alter the larger systems that keep others in limbo. In its deeply human portrayal of relief and regret, of connection and disconnection, Hicok captures not just the precariousness of labor, but the uneasy weight of being the one who holds the power to say yes.

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