ANALYSIS

When looking at the title, we can almost feel the kind of atmosphere it wants to create. When we think of a hug, we think about reassurance, trust or reliance, something intimate and special between two people. Something comfortable, familial.

The first stanza describes a drunk couple at a party, as their friend helps them lay in bed to sleep. The poetic voice introduces the story with imagery to make the readers feel like the characters: “we had drunk and dined”, ”to a bed I reached in one drunk stride”. Through this technique, we can read the room and interpret that they are dizzy and numb and tired. In the same verse, we can find an alliteration of the sound /d/, “we had drunk and dined”.

In the second and last stanza, the main action takes place, and it starts with the unexpected hug from behind “my sleep broke in a hug”, and the realization of the position they are in, describing every intersection. We can identify a consonance of the sound /s/ in the midst of this description, “My shoulder-blades against your chest”, an assonance of the sounds /o/ and /e/ “The whole strength of your body set” and an alliteration of the sound /w/ “As if we were still twenty-two”. We can also find a personification in the verse "My quick sleep had deleted all". It then shifts to a more nostalgic mindset, remembering past times, and it ends with a feeling of home and safeness, and with another alliteration of the sound /r/ “The stay of your secure firm dry embrace”. 

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In the poem, the poetic voice is the main character, they are speaking in first person and from their experience, and are describing the night with their partner and their feelings when they are hugged. It is addressed directly to the partner who is hugging them, the one who is celebrating their birthday. It is almost as if the poetic voice was explaining the night before to the other person the next morning. They are calm, in a peaceful and numb drunken state of mind. They are conscious, warm and comfortable.  

They address someone that is in the scene, that is part of the story and that they know deeply, so they have a drunk and tired attitude, but are loving and gentle at the same time. They also reminisce about past times they had together, and speak from a feeling of happiness, nostalgia, and contentment. Consequently, the tone is relaxed and tender.

They use a very dreamy and sleepy language, almost whispering “I dozed, I slept”. Everything is soft and round, and pure. They are trying not to break the embrace and the little world they created. It is very descriptive and physical as well, “Your instep to my heel, / My shoulder-blades against your chest.” They narrate the exact position of their bodies intertwined in the bed, and how they interact with each other.

When talking about the setting, the poem starts in a loud, chaotic and festive environment, but we are quickly transported to an intimate and comfortable scenario: the bed. Everything described in the poem happens in a bed, and we get the feeling that in their world, for a brief moment, the bed is the only thing that exists. The image the poem is painting is two bodies in a sudden hug, in a comfortable bed, a safe environment. It makes us feel warm and melancholic, and somehow, it makes us feel like intruders, because it is described as such a personal space that it feels like you are violating their intimacy by reading or listening to it.