Name: The Triggering Town
ISBN: 9780393338720

Richard Hugo

“I don't know why we do it. We must be crazy./Welcome, fellow poet.”—Richard Hugo

Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

The Triggering Town

Arden Kowalski

The last few essays delve too far into personal experience and don't gel as well with the beginning. I particularly slogged through the essay on Italy, which is drawn out without too much point. However, credit to Hugo for the excellent writing he opens this collection with, particularly the eponymous essay. 'The Triggering Town' (the essay, not the collection) is one of my favourite pieces of writing.

jam 🍯

"Richard Hugo's free-swinging, go-for-it remarks on poetry and the teaching of poetry are exactly what are needed in classrooms and in the world."—James Dickey Richard Hugo was that rare phenomenon of American letters—a distinguished poet who was also an inspiring teacher. The Triggering Town is Hugo's now-classic collection of lectures, essays, and reflections, all "directed toward helping with that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems." Anyone, from the beginning poet to the mature writer to the lover of literature, will benefit greatly from Hugo's sayd, playful, profound insights and advice concerning the mysteries of literary creation.

The Triggering Town Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

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