Richard Hugo’s poems focus of new book and One Book Montana selection
Published: July 7, 2010
Hugo's Selected Poems chosen for statewide reading program
This year's One Book Montana selection is Richard Hugo’s Selected Poems, featuring poems from the fabled Missoula poet’s first six collections, including The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir and What Thou Lovest Well Remains American. Hugo taught at the University of Montana for almost 18 years, edited the Yale Younger Poets series, and received the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize.
"The poetry of Richard Hugo is one of the most profound and moving human documents that our period of American literature has produced," wrote poet and novelist James Dickey.
Thanks to the support of the book’s publisher, W.W. Norton, a limited number of copies are available for short-term loans to book groups from Humanities Montana. Also available for loan are copies of “Eat Stone and Go On — The Recorded Poetry of Richard Hugo,” and the 1976 documentary about the poet, “Kicking the Loose Gravel Home.”
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the programs Humanities Montana is providing to accompany this powerful collection:
First, go to the page of information and activities on the Humanities Roundtable, www.humanitiesmontana.ning.com. Here, readers can enter into discussions about particular poems or share memories of Hugo, with new topics introduced each month; they can hear Hugo read his poem “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”; find classroom curricula; link to the Richard Hugo House in Seattle; and keep up with the Hugo Events Calendar, among other things.
Contact Humanities Montana Associate Director Kim Anderson at 800-624-6001 (in Montana) for further information.
Seattle poet celebrates Hugo with The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs
Seattle poet Frances McCue, founder of the Richard Hugo House, deftly splices history, poetry, remembrance and imagination into a looking-glass book about the “triggering towns” of the famed Montana poet.
In The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs (a line from Hugo’s poem “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”), subtitled Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo, McCue embarks on her own road trip (actually, dozens over the years), traveling to the towns in Washington, Idaho and Montana that inspired some of Hugo’s best-known poems.
“His attention to the actual places could be scant,” she writes. “But Hugo’s poems resonate more deeply than travelogues or feature stories; they capture the torque between temperament and terrain that is so vital in any consideration of place.”
In a twisty, tender travelogue, McCue takes us to Dixon to visit its only bar, to the Mission in St. Ignatius and to Harold’s Club in Milltown (“where I pissed five years away/ but pleasantly,” wrote Hugo). Wisdom, Walkerville, Butte, Fairfield, Philipsburg and Pony are part of the elegiac tour (as are towns in Washington, where Hugo grew up, and Cataldo and Wallace in Idaho).
Enroute, Hugo’s own story merges with McCue’s observations and interviews with the poet’s friends (including Lois Welch, Bill Kittredge and Annick Smith) in a way that adds texture, detail and insight to a journey that’s both literary and deeply personal.
Black and white photographs by fabled Northwest photographer Mary Randlett, who was 83 when the project began, ground the words with clear, direct images.
Kim Barnes calls the book “a beautifully vivid and poignant meditation on the landscape of the heart and how we are shaped by the poetics of place.”
The hardcover book was published in April by the University of Washington Press and sells for $27.95.
– Kristi Niemeyer
I was lucky enough to have Mr. Hugo as a poetry professor in the early 70’s at the University of Montana. I was excited to be in his class, in his presence really, until one day he asked me, “How did you get into this class?” and went on to chastise me about the fact that by taking a seat in his class I left some tortured soul poet out in the literary cold longing for instruction. I believe I answered that I’d paid my money and some dull and equally untalented clerk let me in and then I humbly begged for tolerance, which the Great Poet granted. I tell this story because his poetry still intrigues me and the highest compliment I can pay him and his work is that I like stuff that rhymes. His doesn’t.
