The Triggering Town

Spurred by a class discussion, I wanted to share a craft book for poetry that really helped me out! It's by Richard Hugo, called The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. It has nine chapters and goes through tips on how to start writing, what assumptions to use, different thoughts while he was teaching, an essay on his trip back to Italy, and bits of his own writing. I found it very helpful in my own writing. It would apply to both poetry and fiction writing (non-fiction would have a rough time, since non-fiction is based in truth while Hugo says to make stuff up.)

The most helpful part of the book is chapter three, “Assumptions”. Hugo bases most of his writing off creating assumptions for the little towns he passes or visits. To help readers generate ideas for their own town, he lists over seventy different assumptions to help get him into the right mindset for a poem. If you need a starting point, look there. And if you read this book and feel inspired to write a poem or story about some dinky little town, then Hugo succeeded in my opinion.

It is a great craft book and really helped me start figuring out my own style of poetry. I would definitely recommend it!

A few assumptions:
“No one dies, makes love, or ages.”
“I am on friendly terms with all couples, but because I live alone and have no girlfriend, I am of constant concern to them.”
“Once the town was booming, but it fell on hard times around 1910.”
“Two whores are kind to everyone but each other.”
“The jail is always empty.”

The rest you will have to read for yourself!