Journal 3- The Triggering Town reflection- Bobbi Swan

Part One:
I found it very interesting that Hugo worked for thirteen years doing other things before he started teaching and working in academia. To me it seems as Hugo did a lot of different things in his 58 years. The last two chapters for sure were some of my favorites. Chapter 8 talked a lot about Italy, and I found it interesting how when Hugo describes visiting Italy again, he is slightly upset to see it is no longer, "brown and gray and lifeless." Hugo says on page 76, "I hate to admit it, but that was the Italy I wanted to find. I fell in love with a sad land, and I wanted it sad one more time." Also through chapter 8 I felt I really gained better insight on Hugo as a person, which I really enjoyed. Chapter 9 was also one of my favorites because it really brought the book to a great conclusion. The ending was powerful and left a meaningful message that will stick with me as I sure it will with many other readers. 


Part Two:
One of the biggest lessons I took away from The Triggering Town would be when writing a poem, "the initiating subject should trigger the imagination as well as the poem" as stated by Hugo on page 5. Hugo says how things that should have a poem written about them, are not the best things to write about because they have a bad habit of "wanting lots of things at the same time. And you provide those things at the expense of your imagination." This advice was helpful for me when writing some of my poems for class. By writing poems about things that do not have "moral or social obligations to feel or claim you feel certain ways" opens up your imagination and helps to not block creativity and imagination while writing.
Another lesson I took away from this book is talked about on page 17 when Hugo says, "If you write often, perhaps every day, you will stay in shape and will better be able to receive those good poems, which are finally a matter of luck, and get them down." This made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I thought of this as like you have to do if you play a sport. You practice, maybe everyday, in order to better your skills and grow as an athlete, or in this case a writer. How can one expect to get better at writing if they don't practice? Just from writing the five poems we did in class I can see the growth and improvement I have made as a writer being that my last poem is way better written than my first one.