The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 3/29/2007)

[RetroLounge]

Letter To Kizer From Seattle

Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support
from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape
in the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I'm ashamed.
I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor
of impending success, winning some poetry prizes
or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got,
the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them.
You were never good. Then I broke and proved it.
Ten successive days I alienated women
I liked best. I told a coed why her poems were bad
(they weren't) and didn't understand a word I said.
Really warped. The phrase "I'll be all right"
came out too many unsolicited times. I'm o.k. now.
I'm back at the primal source of poems: wind, sea
and rain, the market and the salmon. Speaking
of the market, they're having a vital election here.
Save the market? Tear it down? The forces of evil
maintain they're trying to save it too, obscuring,
of course, the issue. The forces of righteousness,
me and my friends, are praying for a storm, one
of those grim dark rolling southwest downpours
that will leave the electorate sane. I'm the last poet
to teach the Roethke chair under Heilman.
He's retiring after 23 years. Most of the old gang
is gone. Sol Katz is aging. Who isn't? It's close now
to the end of summer and would you believe it
I've ignored the Blue Moon. I did go to White Center,
you know, my home town, and the people there,
many are the same, but also aging, balking, remarkably
polite and calm. A man whose name escapes me
said he thinks he had known me, the boy who went alone
to Longfellow Creek and who laughed and cried
for no reason. The city is huge, maybe three quarters
of a million and lots of crime. They are indicting
the former chief of police. Sorry to be so rambling.
I eat lunch with J. Hillis Miller, brilliant and nice
as they come, in the faculty club, overlooking the lake,
much of it now filled in. And I tour old haunts,
been twice to Kapowsin. One trout. One perch. One poem.
Take care, oh wisest of condors. Love. Dick. Thanks again.

Richard Hugo

****************



Richard Hugo, born Richard Hogan, was an American poet, born on December 21, 1923 in White Center, Washington. He was raised by his mother's parents after his father left the family. In 1942 he legally changed his name to Richard Hugo, taking his stepfather's surname. He served in World War II as a bombardier in the Mediterranean. He left the service in 1945 after flying 35 combat missions and reaching the rank of first lieutenant.

Hugo received his B.A. in 1948 and his M.A. in 1952 in Creative Writing from the University of Washington where he studied under Theodore Roethke. He married Barbara Williams in 1952, the same year he stated working as a technical writer for Boeing.

In 1961 his first book of poems, A Run of Jacks, was published. Soon after he took a teaching job at the University of Montana. His wife returned to Seattle in 1964, and they divorced soon afterwards.

Hugo got remarried in 1974 to Ripley Schemm Hansen. In 1977 he was named the editor of the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Hugo died on October 22, 1982.

****************


RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[wildhorses]

1. would that all my ramblings be so poetic

perhaps i need to go '... back at the primal source of poems: wind, sea
and rain, the market and the salmon.'

i hope seattle girl sees this.

and i like the way you have used geography as your theme these last few days...

you should've gotten your books by now;)

:hug::hi:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. My dear Retro!

Talk about stream of consciousness poetry.......

This one is it!

So many jumbled images, it's hard to get through them all...

Multi-layered, like a colorful onion...

Thank you...:hug:

[Dora]

3. His Triggering Town is on my "first books" list.

That's the list of books I read when I first understood I wanted to write poems.

Good voice, there.