Richard Hugo, died 30 years ago this week

Poet and teacher Richard Hugo

I finally got around to reading Richard Hugo's hugely influential, and very readable, slim volume on creative writing and poetry, The Triggering Town, the other day - oddly enough starting it around the 30th anniversary of his death, on October 22, 1982.  I have since begun to go back to his poems.  I was in a poetic dry spell, but reading him is allowing me to get started again.  I found his chapter on his wartime experience in the field in Italy particularly powerful, and it has reminded me that truths told in stylish prose can achieve the force of good poetry.