The Hand

“The Hand” was written by Mary Ruefle, a poet, essayist, and professor at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was originally published in 1996 in a poetry collection titled Cold Pluto. The poem has a free verse format and 18 unmetered lines.

Like much of Ruefle’s writing, the poem blurs the lines between genres,. Although “The Hand” does not strictly adhere to any particular literary movement, it borrows from many of them. Elements of Imagism—an early 20th century movement that favored clear, sharp language and precise imagery—appear in the poem’s stark, simple descriptions. “The Hand” also contains themes of nature and the sublime, biblical allusions, and a valorization of individualism, all of which nod to Romanticism, a 19th century European literary movement that emphasized emotion, imagination, and the natural world.

“The Hand” is a piece of contemporary literature, belonging to an era that began at the end of World War II in 1945 and spans a broad range of styles and topics. The poem’s exploration of the speaker’s humanity, indulgence in everyday moments, and disengagement with class is typical of Ruefle's work. Images, descriptions, motifs, and themes from this poem recur in others: “Grasshopper” (2020) also seeks greater connection to nature and animals, “Lullaby” (2014) documents the stultifying boredom of formality in class or at work, and “Please Read” (2016) and “Keeping it Simple” (1982) feature birds as symbols.

Poet Biography

Mary Ruefle was born in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania, on April 16th, 1952. She grew up in a military family, and spent her youth moving around the United States and Europe. In 1974, she attended Bennington College and graduated with a B.A. in Literature. She went on to attend the writing program at Hollins College. In 2011, she served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa.

Ruefle does not care to delineate much between poetry and prose. In a 2016 interview with The Paris Review, she said: “My interest in drawing lines between genres and coming up with very clear definitions for these things is very…well, if I’m being frank, I just don’t have enough time left on this earth to spend doing that.”

Ruefle is an esteemed writer whose work has received critical acclaim. Her published works include over a dozen poetry collections, including: “The Adamant” (1989), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize; “Cold Pluto” (1996); “Indeed I Was Pleased with the World” (2007); “Selected Poems” (2010), which won the William Carlos Williams Award in 2011; and “Dunce” (2019), which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry. She has also published the essay collections “Madness, Rack, and Honey” (2012), “My Private Property” (2017), and “On Imagination” (2017). Ruefle received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship In 1984, the 1995Whiting Award, the 1998 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2014 Robert Creeley Award. Ruefle was also a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

Ruefle has held fellowships and residencies such as a 1999 Frost Place residency, a 2002 Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, and the 2007 Lannan Foundation residency. She was named Poet Laureate of Vermont in 2019. She currently teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a private graduate-level art school in Montpelier, Vermont.

Poem Text

Ruefle, Mary. “The Hand” 1996. Poets.org.

Summary

The poem opens by introducing an unnamed student in a classroom—their experience becomes the reader’s experience because the poem is narrated in the second person. The student is aware that “The teacher asks a question” (Line 1), but does not share with the reader what the question specifically is. It doesn’t really matter: The student “know[s] the answer” (Line 2) and suspects that they are “the only one in the classroom” (Line 3) who does so. The reason for this is simple: “because the person / in question is yourself, and on that / you are the greatest living authority” (Lines 4-6). The question being asked, either literally, metaphorically, or both, is about the student.

The student could easily reveal their knowledge of the answer, “but you don’t raise your hand” (Line 7). Instead, the student raises the top of their desk and reaches for an apple. We never learn whether the student eats the apple. Instead, the student gazes out the window, while the poem repeats that the student does not raise their hand. Instead, the student contemplates their hand and its structure with a sense of stillness and peace: “there is / some essential beauty in your fingers / which aren’t even drumming” (Lines 11-13). The line “aren’t even drumming” sounds like a student’s defensive rejoinder to a teacher redirecting them. The poem insinuates that it is normal for this student’s to fidget, though they aren’t doing so at this moment. Instead, the student’s fingers lie “flat and peaceful” (Line 14).

The “teacher repeats the question” (Line 15), though the poem still doesn’t disclose what the question is. Rather, we see what the student is seeing through the window: “Outside the window, on an overhanging branch, / a robin is ruffling its feathers” (Lines 16-17). As the student considers the bird, the poem ends on a line about the coming change in seasons: “spring is in the air” (Line 18).