Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.)

• If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions. You are after those words you can own and ways of putting in phrases and lines that are yours by right of obsessive musical deed.
• Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life.

Have a closer look at Hugo’s poet – it is a poet with a very personal voice. Hugo ask the poet to search for: your words, your meanings, your obsessions …etc. But at the same time it is important to notice that the poet, according to Hugo, is not a complete autonomous self, rather he sees the poet as someone who creates herself in & through language, over time – struggling passionately.

• Over the years then, if you are a poet, you will, perhaps without being conscious of it, find a way to write – I guess it would be better to say you will always be chasing a way to write. Actually, you never really find it, or writing would be much easier than it is.

The more I practice, the luckier I get

•  If you write often, perhaps every day, you will stay in shape and will be better able to receive those good poems, which are finally a matter of luck, and get them down.
• Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don’t work.

Richard Hugo