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But even within the rivers of booze, he insisted on being Dick
Hugo.
His favorite watering hole in Montana was not a rock 'n' roll
cavern or an elegant blondes bar or a hip intellectual & artists
saloon on Missoula's Higgins Avenue "Main Street."
Dick Hugo loved a "joint" on Missoula's outskirts frequented
by working class souls like him. "The Milltown Union Bar" be-
came both a refuge and a poem.
Blink & he and we are back in that 1970 seminar room.
Student Julie asks her professor how to deal with writer's block.
"You're blocked?" says Hugo. "Get out of your house. First per-
son you see: What color is their shirt? Let's say blue, right? Walk
the street. The first blue car you see—don't blah blah nitpick. That
car's license plate. The first two numbers are the number of lines.
The next two numbers are the number of syllables per line. Write
a poem to those rules. 'Bout halfway through that prison formula,
what you really wanna, what you gotta, what you really should be
writing will break out of writer's block 'n' you'll be free."
Freedom, wonderful, terrible freedom is laced through Hu-
go's work.
I think freedom is one reason why he loved baseball.
Hugo played Seattle kids' ball, semi-pro baseball, local softball.
Wrote "Missoula Softball Tournament," a powerful poem about
"the wives, the beautiful wives" of the adult jobholding players in
a Missoula city league where wives and husbands both could cre-
ate more meaning and joy in their lives than just what their roll-of-
the-dice gotchas, work labels and homelife rules dictated, a place
to do and be and dream beyond such realities.
A sense of place is crucial in Hugo's works.
Place includes things like his dictum to end each line of a
poem on a strong word.
He loved finding and going to new places. Exploring. Seeing
O P E N U N T I L D E C E M B E R 1 st
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Dick Hugo loved a "joint"
ON MISSOULA'S OUTSKIRTS FREQUENTED BY WORK-
ING CLASS SOULS LIKE HIM. "THE MILLTOWN UNION
BAR" BECAME BOTH A REFUGE AND A POEM.
