Distinctly Montana Magazine

81 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m R ICHARD HUGO COMMANDS THE END OF A RECTANGULAR TABLE in the seminar room on the second floor of the Liberal Arts building at the University of Montana in Missoula as out- side the weekday windows he faces rages 1970's Vietnam War. Hugo knows war far, far too well. His poem "When We Crashed" rocks pages with terror from when he was a WW II bombardier slammed out of the sky to Eu- rope's earth. He flew 35 combat missions. Years later, he met Pu- litzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic in San Francisco and they realized Hugo'd bombed Yugoslavia where Simic was five years old. In that 1970 UM seminar room, call Hugo "the teacher"— —too small of a word, but use what we've got. A score of "creative writing" students sit around the table hop- ing—as Hugo wrote—to "ride the forces of whatever sweeps us along…to be tougher than fate." Hugo's a bulldog. Horseshoe balding. Steel squint. Open collar shirt. A sports jacket strains across the shoulders of this former semi-pro baseball catcher. He's gruff but with self-depre- cating humor and genuine laughs. He listens. More than that, he senses. Feels. Searches for the heart of this moment. All of us students in that UM room know he's a brilliant poet. None of us know all the currents of his tortured soul. He once wrote: "A poet is like a drummer alone in the ballroom of a deserted hotel." He'd changed his name. Who of us hasn't imagined that bold move? He was born Richard Franklin Hogan on the south side of Se- attle in 1923, shuttled to live with his maternal grandparents to be raised, beaten and belittled. Grew up depressed in the poverty of The Great Depression. Started writing at age nine because… because…Because he had to. Because that's what he had. Or had him. Nineteen years after his birth, The Law let him change his name to Richard Franklin Hugo. Then he joined the Army Air Corps. Became a bombardier. Came back with a chest full of medals over a scarred heart. The G.I. bill helped him pay for the University of Washington where he found a mentor in the legendary poet Theodore Ro- ethke— —and admitted the necessity in his soul that gave him hope and meaning, a current that swept him forward with it, ordered him to swim—write, create, realize poems. "Writing is a slow, cumulative way of accepting your life as val- id," Hugo'd later say. "Of accepting yourself over a lifetime. Of realizing that your life is important. And it is. It's all you've got. All you ever had for sure." Richard Hugo Reminds Us by JAMES GRADY

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