Triggering Town reflection - Bethany Swan journal 3

In the last two chapters, you are able to tell the book was coming to an end with the memoirs. The book contains a series of specific insights. Richard Hugo gives us a method on how to write poetry. By seeing how Hugo arrives at his conclusions, this method can be applied to numerous other instances. By reading how Richard Hugo determines what to write, the method he gives us can be used and applied to our own poetry.

‘Ci Vediamo’ is a memoir, written on returning to Italy, after fighting there in World War Two. Hugo tell the story on all of his memories and what he learned about himself there. He also walks us through his thought process, while writing poems based on specific events. He says, "Problems of how memory and the imagination modify and transform experience, problems of stances you might have to take or to drop to order language into a poem." He tells us at the beginning of the chapter, he would show us this throughout his stories.

In the final chapter, ‘How Poets Make a Living’ Hugo tells us about working in a factory. This chapter is mainly based on the story of the squatter and how that became the subject of one of his poems. He starts off by mentioning a question on the differences between business and university. "In some ways the university is a far more real world than business. So there are differences but I'm not sure they affect the writing of poems..." The last lines in the book are a great ending and is a great last point to his overall lesson.

One of the most impactful chapters in this book to me was chapter three: 'Assumptions'. In the first paragraph he states, "Often the weirder the better. Words love the ridiculous areas of our minds. But silly or solid, assumptions are necessary elements in a successful base of writing operations." Assumptions are the back-story to your poem. Its useful write down original thoughts, but you shouldn’t question them while you are writing. Get your thoughts down then decided if they need tweaked. In another important lesson, Hugo uses ‘The Triggering Town’ as a metaphor for personal obsessions and the subjects that cause you to write. I learned it is useful to know what they are so you can have ideas for subjects of poems.