Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) When Roethke read his favorites aloud (Yeats, Hopkins, Auden, …) the students could feel themselves falling in love with the sounds of the words. He gave students a love of the sound of language. His classes were clinics. He performed therapy on the ear. Self-Portrait With…
Tag: language function
Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right or sane
Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) Assumptions lie behind the work of all writers. Words love the ridicules areas of our minds. It is important that a poet not question her assumptions, at least not in the middle of composition. Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right…
Chasing a way to write
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…
The Triggering Town
Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) I caution against communication because once language exist only to convey information, it is dying. In news articles the relation of the words to the subject is a strong one. The relation of the words to the writer is weak. (Since the majority of your reading…
sub rosa 