Customer Reviews

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

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All the wisdom you need to write are in two small books: "The Elements of Style" and this one. I heard it from the man himself, and though Hugo's summary cannot reproduce the richness of his poetry seminars at the University of Montana, it's the closest you can come this side of paradise. His poetry exercises work. You can apply them and your writing will improve. Hugo cannot give you talent but he can help you understand if you have it or not.

Even his stories show how to live as a writer. Here's a couple Hugo sayings that are not in this book: "To be a poet, you have to know what's important about life. And it's not washing the damned car on Saturday." "There are many, many good poets. There are very few good critics."

Hugo is a delight to read in the way C.S. Lewis is: he is endearing, humble, and gentle--a man of style, grace, and quick wit--while remaining tough, straightforward, and confident. Even if you don't pay attention to what Hugo is saying, the way he says it could carry you though the book enjoyably.

Hugo's intent in assembling this book of lectures and essays is to teach and instruct hopeful poets, and for him the soul of poetry pedagogy is basically (and simply) to save students time, to show them what they would eventually teach themselves if they continued writing on their own.

The danger in "The Triggering Town" is that Hugo is at once demanding and seductive. He doesn't put his suggestions and opinions in uncertain terms, and yet he avoids coming off as a control freak by expressing his thoughts so beautifully and clearly. Reading Hugo, it's difficult not to be wooed into becoming a Hugoite.

Make no mistake: There are far, far worse things for a poet than to follow Hugo's advice and methods. Still, if a poet is never able to shrug off some of Hugo's axioms, she will never achieve true greatness. Conventional wisdom has it that only after you have learned to follow the rules can you break them. There is truth in this. But it possible to be taught the rules so well that one can never break them. It is a daunting task for any poet to muster up the sense of authority to dismiss Hugo's teaching. If a poet is too shy and insecure to throw away his teacher's instruction (as many greats are), perhaps the best path is to avoid the formal instruction Hugo offers and to simply read the fruit of great poets instead.

This collection of essays comprise the single best "anti-How To" book on writing. Hugo cuts to the chase and encourages us to discover what's at stake in our writing, and to allow the poem or story to tell itself in the way it wants to be told. I read this one annually, just to remind myself to trust the story -- I don't have to "manage" it.

The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo is a treasure chest full of tips for creative writers. It is overflowing with the wisdom of Hugo's years as a professor and poet. The book is made up of compiled lectures and essays about poetry and writing. Placed into chapters, these teachings make the book into a type of guide for creative writers. Hugo wrote on his own experiences as a student, professor and writer. He also told how experiences in a person's life could affect that person's writing. For example, Hugo's experiences in the Second World War helped to generate many poem ideas that eventually became poems. Also, he grew up with the perspective that he was outside of society. He called these thoughts or feelings triggers. The triggers will initiate the passion needed to write the poem about the subject.
Richard Hugo taught at the University of Montana and has written 12 books total, a few of which are A Run of Jacks, Death of the Kapowsin Tavern, Selected Poems, and Making Certain It Goes On. However, these books are slightly different from The Triggering Town in that they are books of poems. The Triggering Town isn't the typical "how to" book but instead is somewhat like a guide showing the possibilities. Experienced poets and teachers will find this book delightful, and beginners will find it's help extensive.

Have used this book in poetry workshops with great success. Offers advice that's right on the money and easy to apply, and is as direct as the poet himself. I have missed this book and sure am happy to see it's available again. Recommended for both seasoned and new poets alike. cc

Richard Hugo was a noted American poet (d. 1982) and also a noted teacher of poetry-writing at the University of Montana. This slim book collects nine lectures or essays ostensibly on the craft and practice of writing poetry. It also contains, by way of illustration, a few of Hugo's poems. Curiously, I get more out of his prose writing than I do from his poetry.

THE TRIGGERING TOWN certainly contains much that should be helpful to a young poet. But the book should not be pigeonholed simply as a "how to" book for aspiring poets. There also is much clear-headed and clear-sighted wisdom about creative writing, the academic world, and even life in general. Here are two examples.

"I've seen sentences that defy comprehension written by people with doctorates in English from our best universities. * * * I doubt that academic writing will improve until academics believe Valery, who said he couldn't think of anything worse than being right. In much academic writing, clarity runs a poor second to invulnerability."

"[A]s a sound psychoanalyst once remarked to me wryly, narcissism is difficult to avoid. When we are told in dozens of insidious ways that our lives don't matter we may be forced to insist, often far too loudly, that they do. A creative-writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters. Your life matters, all right. It is all you've got for sure, and without it you are dead."

The last two essays, "Ci Vediamo" and "How Poets Make a Living", are especially worthwhile. They both contain poems that Hugo based on personal life experiences, and it is instructive to see how he assembled, molded, and fitted fragments of his life experiences into a literary artifact. But, as I said, the poems themselves don't really touch me. What does impress me, and touch me, are the essays themselves, both of which are as much memoir as expositions on writing and both of which are quite accomplished.

And that's saying quite a bit, as I've read more than a few. I also like Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual, so if you like that I'm pretty sure you'll like The Triggering Town.

I think what I like best (so far - I'm not quite done) from Hugo is his concept of writing "off the subject" - as a poet it just seems to make so much sense to me.

I've already ordered several other copies of this book to give as presents to folks in the graduate program here at UT.

In "The Triggering Town" Richard Hugo is simply getting down to business. He is not speaking from some affected academic perch, using oblique language or creating an artificial sense of distance between "them" (poets with MFA degrees) and "us" (poets without them). The book reads sometimes as an oddball combination of private and public experiences teaching and writing all rolled neatly and honestly into one.

In the same way that Paul Valery threw out the BS in "The Art of Poetry" and spoke directly to the novice, somewhat accomplished poet, or expert about what poetry is and is not, Hugo is determined to strip us of illusions regarding what we can and can't accomplish by becoming part of a poetry workshop. A good example would be page 33: "Then there's that banal, tiresome question: can writing be taught? Yes it can and no it can't. Ultimately the most important things a poet will learn about writing are from himself in the process. A good teacher can save a young poet years by simply telling things he need not waste time on, like trying to will originality or trying to share an experience in language or trying to remain true to the facts (but that's the way it really happened.) Roethke used to mumble: "Jesus, you don't want to say that." And you didn't but you hadn't yet become ruthless enough to create. You still felt some deep moral obligan to "reality" and "truth", and of course it wasn't moral obligation at all but fear of yourself and your inner life."

While some may disagree, I concur wholeheartedly. Many young poets are simply scared silent by the vast and endless "schools" of poetry (why does every form of poetry have to boxed in by some term or label?) and practically extraterrestrial linguistic "forms" poets use. There are times where we have to forget about all that and put the pen on the page. That's the work. Revision, deciding which pre-invented category one feels comfortable in, these all all come after the actual act of writing.

His references to personal experiences with Theodore Roethke, a great poet, did not at all strike me as random or cryptic. If you're an aspiring poet and you've read the poems of Roethke, you're probably going to want to hear what he said in a classroom. You definitely will.

This is an all too rare example of a talented and established poet getting down in the trenches with those who want to get to the bottom of this oratorical, magical art, and practice it. In no way is this a "diary" any more than William Packard's "Art of Poetry Writing" or Mary Oliver's "Rules For The Dance" are "diaries". It is an example of humility and generosity from a fellow poet who has honed down his art and met some great personalities while doing it. Unreservedly recommended.

Richard Hugo begins his collection of essays on poetry and writing the same way he begins his poetry classes: "You'll never be a poet until you realize that everything I say today and this quarter is wrong. It may be right for me, but it is wrong for you" (3). It is with this caveat that Hugo proceeds to presents his ideas on writing and poetry. Hugo writes in a voice that is at once omniscient and intensely personal--it is this voice, and the attitude it embodies, which Hugo believes is necessary for a writer.

Hugo's essays address both the beginning and the mature creative writer. He is concerned with his own writing process, not his students'. His most powerful example of how poems are written comes in an essay detailing his experiences in Italy during World War II, how he returned to Italy with his wife in the 1960s, and the poems that resulted from those two separate and complementary experiences. His thesis is delivered again and again: This is how I write; figure out how you write. His one exception is in detailing how his own creative writing professor, Theodore Roethke, taught, although there is again the suggestion of "This is how Roethke taught. This is how I teach. It depends on the writer." In fact, Hugo admits to mimicking Roethke in the classroom, noting how Roethke's style of teaching was not Hugo's style, and how he had to move from under that shadow to become his own kind of writer and his own kind of teacher.

Twenty years after it's original copyright, Hugo's book The Triggering Town is still the best hands on approach to writing poetry ever published. Hugo's advice is understandable and relatively painless to apply. His philosophy of allowing poems to write themselves is the surest road to music and truth.