The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing - Books

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, originally published in 1979, remains one of the freshest and most refreshing treatises on the writing of poetry. While you won't find formality or nicety here, Hugo has the unusual quality of being highly opinionated and yet not at all convinced that what works for him will work for you. Hugo doesn't believe that he can teach you how to write; he believes he can teach you how he writes, and by doing so, teach you "how to teach yourself how to write." And while most writing instructors claim that one can't be a good writer without being a good reader, Hugo claims "that one learns to write only by writing." Hugo's essays are strong-willed and funny and by turns full of bluster and cloaked in modesty. While "a good teacher can save a young poet years by simply telling him 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," he writes, "ultimately the most important things a poet will learn about writing are from himself in the process." Above all, Hugo stresses that creative writing is creative because it is a creative act: "if one is writing the way one should, one does not know what will be on the page until it is there." So, he warns, "If you want to communicate, use the telephone." And "Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism."

Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Triggering Great Writing and Teaching December 9, 2008
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.

2 out of 5 stars

For club members only March 26, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book is neither a guide to writing poetry, nor does it provide much insight about it for "the public at large", this book is written for a very private audience, that of students of creative writing classes in the faculty where the author has been a teacher, or any students of poetry who are particularly keen on following specific personalities from the author's particular academic world. It is a private club of sorts, where the bulk of the lectures are regarding issues that would be of interest mainly to their little private world.

There are a few occasional points and general thoughts that are intriguing/inspiring, such as "in the world of imagination, all things belong", or, "you owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything" (both from the first chapter). The first chapter, made up of eight pages, is the one that contained the bulk of insights about poetry that could be of use to anyone outside of Hugo's academic circle.

The book was dedicated to his (and only his) way of writing, and to what inspires him in particular, mainly, visiting new towns.

One chapter of the book is dedicated to anecdotes about his teacher Roethke, that would be of little interest to anyone outside that particular circle, since a lot of them are personal stories and not major pronouncements about poetry that could be useful to a larger audience.

Then, there is a whole chapter about "creative writing courses" which, again, deals only with the problems of Academia and how narrow minded some academics can be (ironic). The writing does not even encompass "creative writing courses" in general, but addresses the narrow world of faculties like Hugo's and its staff. Again, to anyone outside that world, and even if they are students of creative writing but outside a university campus, this chapter has nothing to offer.

Then, there is a chapter called "nuts and bolts", where Hugo cites some poems of students and how they could be made "better". In one particular case (a poem called "Check your barometer", pages 45-46) Hugo criticizes the poem because "the world seems separated from the poet's capacity to respond to it." He then added extra words of his own to "insert the poet inside the poem", then pronounced it to be "better". The "corrected" version obliterated precisely that which constituted the appeal of the poem! Why did Hugo see "the world as separated from the poet's capacity to respond" as a "mistake" that had to be "corrected"? Why could he not see it as a stance crafted deliberately by the poet?! What frame of reference was Hugo dipping into when he made such a "correction"? Was it not his very own personal way of seeing, which he assumed to be the measure of what is "correct"?? How could such a self-centered criterion of judgement make "an inspiring teacher" (as stated on the back cover of the book )??

There are tens upon tens of pages of stories (a third of the entire book) from his life followed by some of his poems based upon them, long stories which are not terribly interesting to read, and should not take up so much space in a book supposed to be about poetry, not an autobiography. Telling them as an excuse to showing the poems he wrote after experiencing them contradicts what he himself wrote in the first chapter of this book about "owing reality nothing" and how unimportant "facts" were, in which case, why did he insist on telling us precisely those "facts"?? (Was it, perhaps, based upon advice from his editor, as a filler to make a book out of these essays?)

With the exception of some insightful statements here and there, this book is a very private one, made more of anecdotes than of information, filled mostly with Hugo's own poetry, or "corrections" of his students' poetry (without even having the courtesy of providing their names).
While it might have been prized by Hugo's students, or anyone fascinated by his poetry, for those outside of that private audience, this book has very little to offer.

4 out of 5 stars

A noteworthy collection of advice and wisdom March 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

Place and Memory May 19, 2007
I can say one certain thing about the book. It makes me want to write. I woke up early the following morning after reading it until three a.m. and wrote a new poem. The book has so many interesting themes I could not comment on them all in this small space, but I will say it talks profoundly about Place and Memory. The book falls into my personal list of best books on the craft of writing.

5 out of 5 stars

Best book on writing I've ever read December 15, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

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.

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