The Hug by Tess Gallagher
"The Hug" by Tess Gallagher is a poignant poem that explores themes of connection and emotional spontaneity through the experience of a woman who unexpectedly hugs a stranger while walking with her lover. The poem unfolds in four stanzas, capturing the serendipitous nature of encounters and the complexity of relationships. The speaker's desire to hug her lover arises spontaneously, leading to the surprising moment when a male bystander requests a hug as well. This interaction challenges the speaker's understanding of love and possession, revealing a moment of intimacy that transcends her relationship with her lover.
As the hug unfolds, the speaker experiences a deep emotional connection, questioning the significance of the gesture and reflecting on the nature of human bonds. The poem’s imagery contrasts the vibrant, open street life with the stillness of the houses nearby, emphasizing the tension between spontaneity and domesticity. The hug ultimately leaves a lasting imprint on the speaker, both physically and emotionally, symbolizing a transformative experience that alters her perception of connection. Gallagher’s conversational style and use of similes contribute to the poem's exploration of the unexpected beauty and complexity within human interactions, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences of connection.
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Subject Terms
The Hug by Tess Gallagher
First published: 1984, in Willingly
Type of poem: Narrative
The Poem
Tess Gallagher’s “The Hug” moves through four stanzas relating an experience of the female speaker giving a hug to a stranger and coming to an illumination about the human ability to connect. Central to the poem is the speaker’s relationship to the lover taking a walk with her when this experience occurs. Their closeness sparks the stranger’s request to receive one of the hugs the woman gives to her lover. Curiously, the speaker appears lost at the end of the poem, the hug over, her lover not much of a presence anymore.
Serendipity characterizes the poem’s movement. Events seem to just happen, and one thing follows another. The oddity of a woman “reading a poem on the street” is not remarked upon. The lovers, “arms around each other,” stop and listen; the street life is free-flowing and “open.” The only ominous note is the contrast to the houses surrounding them: “no one is entering or leaving.”
This stasis is offset by the woman’s sudden desire to hug her lover: “a hug comes over me.” She feels emotion; she acts, being spontaneous and loving. So attractive are her actions that a male bystander approaches and asks, “Can I have one of those?” The speaker is baffled by this man and wonders where he came from. His sudden appearance is as serendipitous as the sidewalk poetry reading or the speaker’s desire to give her lover a hug. She says she is “surprised” at this request but even more taken aback that her lover agrees to it, not feeling possessive of her. The speaker’s ordinary notion about love has been shaken: “love/ that nabs you with ‘for me/ only’ and holds on.”
She matches her lover’s nonchalance by hugging the stranger. This hug is the heart of the poem, and the woman gives it everything she has, although doubts creep in: “How big a hug is this supposed to be?” The man wears an overcoat, and “he is so big” she cannot reach her arms all the way around him. Instead, she “snuggle[s] in.” He returns the hug, the two of them acting “So truly, so tenderly” they transcend their bodies; the speaker even forgets her lover. Then she thinks of the houses on the street and possibly the people inside looking out at them.
Gallagher concludes the poem with several insights, some ironic: “a little permission is a dangerous thing.” In giving the hug so fully, she neglects her lover. Even so, she defends the intensity of the hug. If one is going to give a hug, it should be “a masterpiece of connection.” She is left with an “imprint” of the man’s coat button on her cheek, but when she tries to return to the way things were before, she is disoriented and can not seem to find “some place/ to go back to.”
Forms and Devices
Gallagher’s poem is conversational and depends little on traditional poetic devices, though there are some. The image of the houses in the first stanza seems initially just incidental background. They are self-contained houses with “no one…entering or leaving.” If there is no departure, there must not be a journey; thus the houses function as a contrast to the speaker who makes a journey of self-discovery. The houses reappear in stanza 3 as if to remind readers of their stolid presence.
Stanza 2 contains two similes. The desire to hug her lover “comes over” the woman “like a variable star shooting light/ off to make itself comfortable, then/ subsiding.” A “variable star” would be like the Sun going through periodic solar storms because of the pressures of internal gases. Solar flares exude an enormous amount of energy and may even interrupt communication systems on earth. There is no way to predict them. Likewise, Gallagher’s simile places emphasis on the spontaneous quality of the woman’s feelings. One does not know why the hug occurs at that particular moment. It must have something to do with the poem being read on the street by another woman. No overt connection is made in the poem, however. The hug is inexplicable, “like a variable star.”
The second simile speaks of the relationship between the two lovers as being defined differently by the lover’s acquiescence to the stranger’s request. The woman is surprised to discover that her lover does not regard her as his, that is, “exclusive as a nose to/ its face.” Gallagher’s word choice reinvigorates the cliché of something obvious being as “plain as the nose on one’s face.” Her lover’s surprising lack of sexual possessiveness propels her into the intimacy of hugging the stranger. This surprise generates more surprise.
Although hugging the stranger was not her idea, the speaker gets totally involved in it, so much so that in the last stanza she exhorts: “when you hug someone you want it/ to be a masterpiece of connection.” Speaking as an authority, the woman adopts metaphorical language: the hug is a “masterpiece,” a work of high order connecting one human being to another in a direct, sensuous, but ultimately nonsexual way. Gallagher compares the intensity of this connection to “the way the button/ on his coat will leave the imprint of/ a planet in my cheek/ when I walk away.” The stranger has left a mark on her, the roundness of his coat button suggesting “a planet.” In hugging him, she has entered another world. Coming back to the ordinary world, she has problems reentering and can not seem to “find some place/ to go back to.” There is no mention of the lover.