Richard Hugo - (1923-1982)
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I. Biography Richard Hogan was born in a suburb of Seattle, White Center, on December 21, 1923. He later changed his name to Richard Hugo. He was abandoned by his parents and left
to be raised by his grandparents, Fred and Ora Monk. Hugo was described as a loner, but a good friend. Hugo loved baseball and fishing. These were his primary passions. In his collection of essays,
The Real West Marginal Way, he says that, "The dignity and self sufficiency I longed for, I found on the baseball and softball fields, or when I was alone." In the same
collection, he writes, "By the mid-1930s, when I was ten or eleven, baseball had become such an obsession that I imagined ball parks everywhere. In the country, I visualized
games in progress on the real grass cattle were eating. In the city as I rode down Fourth Avenue on the bus, the walls of warehouses became outfield fences with dramatic doubles
and triples booming off them. Hitting was important in my fantasies. Pitching meant little except as a service necessary for some long drive far beyond the outfielders. I kept the
parks small in my mind so homeruns wouldn't be too difficult to hit." It is obvious from these two excerpts that baseball was a central figure in Hugo's life. He played baseball
throughout his schooling, and even in city leagues. Hugo even played baseball for his college, the University of Washington, but was ejected for playing intramural softball.
Hugo also served as a bombardier with the Air Force in the WWII, and some of his poems were based on his experiences in the war. In 1951, he started work with Boeing, where
everybody seemed to work. There, he was a technical writer. Of course, this didn't allow Hugo any creative freedom, but it did show that he had interest in writing. Hugo was
mainly a poet. All of his books of poetry were published between the years of 1961 and 1980. During that time, he moved from Washington to Montana and he got a job at the
University of Montana as the leader of the creative writing program. Richard Hugo died of leukemia in September of 1982. He was buried in the St. Mary's Cemetary in Missoula. II. Hugo on the Web
http://www.cortlandreview.com/bookstore/hugo.htm
http://www.eccentrix.com/artist/phoenixlit/hugo.html
III. Literary Works The Difference Between Night and Day
This essay was submitted by a student of Steve Gardiner, a teacher at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana.
Making Certain It Goes on: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo
Natural Histories
One Way to Reconstruct the Scene
Picture Bride
Selected Poems
The Triggering Town : Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
Farewell to Russia
The Gorbachev Version