Quotes from Richard Hugo

Say nothing and just make music and you'll find plenty to say.

Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism.

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.

Our reaction against the sentimentality embodied in Victorian and post-Victorian writing was so resolute writers came to believe that the further from sentimentality we got, the truer the art. That was a mistake. ...if you are not risking sentimentality, you are not close to your inner self.

When you write a poem these relations must reverse themselves. That is, the relation of the words to the subject must weaken and the relation of the words to the writer (you) must take on strength.

I fear, trying to improve human nature.

And if families start scattering like stars you can pass laws based on food, rejection and the long drop justified to rock. The Saracens were not impressed. They yelled plunder loud enough for centuries to hear. And here men said to hell with it and left. Barring big rains now, accelerated erosion or a sudden real estate deal, this insufferable figure of Christ will stand over us all God knows how long. The town got smart and moved. You came back to see it. You are the one who failed.

there's too many people in here. If I had my way, I'd have nothing but young chicks, the innocent ones you can teach something.

The imagination is a cynic.

Hope for what? I don't know. Maybe hope that humanity will always survive civilization.

We won't all disappear on a remote country road in the Monroe Valley, but like The Admiral and his wife we are all going into the dark. Some of us hope that before we do we have been honest enough to scream back at the fates. Or if we never did it ourselves, that someone, derelict or poet, did it for us once in some euphonic way our inadequate capacity for love did not deny our hearing.

We won't all disappear on a remote country road in the Monroe Valley, but like The Admiral and his wife we are all going into the dark. Some of us hope that before we do we have been honest enough to scream back at the fates. Or if we never did it ourselves, that someone, derelict or poet, did it for us once in some euphonic way our inadequate capacity for love did not deny our hearing. * From Brewster Ghiselin, Against the Circle (New York: Dutton, 1946), p. 60.

In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout.

but there is in me something that feeds on the now of things.

You trust to luck. You are not about to master your fate.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

You might come here Sunday on a whim. Say your life broke down. The last good kiss you had was years ago. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives. Only churches are kept up. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he's done.

In the world of imagination, all things belong.

I hate that phrase "the real world." Why is an aircraft factory more real than a university? Is it?

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism.

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive.

You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium and scorn sufficient to support a town, not just Philipsburg, but towns of towering blondes, good jazz and booze the world will never let you have until the town you came from dies inside?