[New-Poetry] The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

[Anny Ballardini]

a perfect narrative quality, poetic stories. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: AlMaginnes at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 8:51 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo


  One of the best books, if not the best, ever for beginning and even veteran poets. I usually use several chapters of it for my creative writing classes.

  This is a poem of Hugo's that in many ways made poetry real for me:

  Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

  You might come here Sunday on a whim. 
  Say your life broke down. The last good kiss 
  you had was years ago. You walk these streets 
  laid out by the insane, past hotels 
  that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try 
  of local drivers to accelerate their lives. 
  Only churches are kept up. The jail 
  turned 70 this year. The only prisoner 
  is always in, not knowing what he's done.

  The principal supporting business now 
  is rage. Hatred of the various grays 
  the mountain sends, hatred of the mill, 
  The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls 
  who leave each year for Butte. One good 
  restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out. 
  The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines, 
  a dance floor built on springs--
  all memory resolves itself in gaze, 
  in panoramic green you know the cattle eat 
  or two stacks high above the town, 
  two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse 
  for fifty years that won't fall finally down.

  Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss 
  still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat 
  so accurate, the church bell simply seems 
  a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?

  Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium 
  and scorn sufficient to support a town, 
  not just Philipsburg, but towns 
  of towering blondes, good jazz and booze 
  the world will never let you have 
  until the town you came from dies inside?

  Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty 
  when the jail was built, still laughs 
  although his lips collapse. Someday soon, 
  he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up. 
  You tell him no. You're talking to yourself. 
  The car that brought you here still runs. 
  The money you buy lunch with, 
  no matter where it's mined, is silver 
  and the girl who serves your food 
  is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

  And another:

  Death of the Kapowsin Tavern

  I can't ridge it back again from char.
  Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
  and shattered glass smoked black and strung
  about from the explosion I believe
  in the reports. The white school up for sale
  for years, most homes abandoned to the rocks 
  of passing boys--the fire, helped by wind
  that blew the neon out six years before,
  simply ended lots of ending.

  A damn shame. Now, when the night chill
  of the lake gets in a troller's bones
  where can the troller go for bad wine
  washed down frantically with beer?
  And when wise men are in style again
  will one recount the two-mile glide of cranes
  from dead pines or the nameless yellow
  flowers thriving in the useless logs,
  or dots of light all night about the far end
  of the lake, the dawn arrival of the idiot
  with catfish--most of all, above the lake
  the temple and our sanctuary there?

  Nothing dies as slowly as a scene.
  The dusty jukebox cracking through
  the cackle of a beered-up crone--
  wagered wine--sudden need to dance--
  these remain in the black debris.
  Although I know in time the lake will send
  wind black enough to blow it all away.






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