31 Letters and 13 Dreams

by Richard Hugo

Critics have praised Hugo's technical skills, the emotional impact of his compressed images, and the casual, sometimes humorous tone of his poems. In addition to his major poetry collections-including A Run of Jacks (1961), Death of the Kapowsin Tavern (1965), Good Luck in Cracked Italian (1969), The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir (1973), What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American (1975), 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (1977), and Selected Poems (1979)-Hugo also published a collection of essays, The Triggering Town (1979) and the mystery novel Death and the Good Life (1981); his autobiography was posthumously published as The Real West Marginal Way (1987). His forte, however, was poetry, and his characteristic stance as a self-analytic writer, a perceptive observer, and a Westerner is evident in Making Certain It Goes The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (1984).

Genres: Poetry, Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Richard Hugo (December 21, 1923 - October 22, 1982), born Richard Hogan, was an American poet. Primarily a regionalist, Hugo's work reflects the economic depression of the Northwest, particularly Montana. Born in White Center, Washington, he was raised by his mother's parents after his father left the family. In 1942 he legally changed his name to Richard Hugo, taking his stepfather's surname. He served in World War II as a bombardier in the Mediterranean. He left the service in 1945 after flying 35 combat missions and reaching the rank of first lieutenant.

Hugo received his B.A. in 1948 and his M.A. in 1952 in Creative Writing from the University of Washington where he studied under Theodore Roethke.[1] He married Barbara Williams in 1952, the same year he started working as a technical writer for Boeing.

In 1961 his first book of poems, A Run of Jacks, was published. Soon after he took a creative writing teaching job at the University of Montana. He later became the head of the creative writing program there.[2] His wife returned to Seattle in 1964, and they divorced soon after. He published five more books of poetry, a memoir, a highly respected book on writing, and also a mystery novel. His posthumous book of collected poetry, Making Certain It Goes On, evinces that his poems are marked by crisp, gorgeous images of nature that often stand in contrast to his own depression, loneliness, and alcoholism. Although almost always written in free verse, his poems have a strong sense of rhythm that often echoes iambic meters. He also wrote of large number of informal epistolary poems at a time when that form was unfashionable.

Hugo was a friend of poet James Wright.

Hugo’s The Real West Marginal Way is a collection of essays, generally autobiographical in nature, that detail his childhood, his military service, his poetics, and his teaching.

Hugo remarried in 1974 to Ripley Schemm Hansen. In 1977 he was named the editor of the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Hugo died of leukemia on October 22, 1982.

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one at all, unfortunately. These "Thirty One Letters" feel too personal, like breaking open a diary and reading the horrible, embarrassing thoughts of a younger sibling. In one letter to the great poet, Charles Simic, Hugo writes:

Dear Charles: And so we meet once in San Francisco and I learn
I bombed you long ago in Belgrade when you were five.
I remember. We were after a bridge on the Danube
hoping to cut the German armies off as they fled north
from Greece. We missed. Not unusual, considering I
was one of the bombardiers. I couldn't hit my ass if
I sat on the Norden or rode a bomb down singing
The Star Spangled Banner.

Did he just make a lighthearted joke about bombing Charles Simic's village and then send it to him in the form of a letter? Am I missing something?

Hugo apparently flew 35 bombing raids during World War II, so this is autobiographical. He concludes the poem with this:

Nice to meet you finally after
all the mindless hate. Next time, if you want to be sure
you survive, sit on the bridge I'm trying to hit and wave.
I'm coming in on course but nervous and my cross hairs flutter.
Wherever you are on earth, you are safe. I'm aiming but
my bombs are candy and I've lost the lead plane. Your friend, Dick.

This is confession gone wrong, in my opinion. I would be very interested to hear how Simic received this. I can't imagine well, but perhaps I'm wrong.

The hardest part about these poems is that these are supposedly his real thoughts. He suffered from depression and I believe alcoholism, (If not that, he sure did drink a lot in the poems) so he often commiserates about how awful his life is.

In one horrific "poem" he fantasizes about violence, in which he rants:

I feel I am going to dynamite the pool.

I presume this is with people inside. He continues to offer an explanation later in the poem:

I think I know the reason I want to plant explosions. It's the same reason I like an occasional mark of punctuation. A comma between bears and a colon following alligator jaws. Because I want a mark in time.

Perhaps I have missed the beauty in this, but all I keep thinking is that this was probably also the unibomber's motivation - to have a mark in time.

If this wasn't autobiographical and not actual letters he sent to other poets and writers, I might have a different view. I always respect poets and artists, but I don't enjoy the musings of madmen.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several great poems in this collection, which started haltingly for me but gained a quiet power as I went along. The thirteen dream poems are wonderful staccato interpolations among the more loquacious letters.

At first the letters seemed jarring, as if I were intruding on a conversation. Gradually they opened up and I felt more comfortable, more included, as the letters themselves became fuller, more tender and particularly more vulnerable - not to personal demons and personal loss, but coming to terms with aging, with relationships gone bad, with starting something new when one is feeling old.

Of course, the triggering towns are present. Even though it comes after 31 Letters and 13 Dreams in his bibliography, I read The Triggering Town before I read this collection for the first time. I'm glad I did, as the later book helped me discern the connection Hugo feels to place, and helped me appreciate more the places he evokes in this collection.

Some favorites: "In Your War Dream," "Letter to Bly from La Push," "Letter to Logan from Milltown," "In Your Hot Dream," "Letter to Wright from Gooseprairie," "In Your Wild Dream," "In Your Big Dream," and "In Your Good Dream."

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several of these poems previously in Hugo's Selected Poems, so I itched to read this book. While reading, I vacillated between preferring the letters to the dreams, the dreams to the letters. Both have their strengths, both the occasional weakness. The dreams lead you in, mostly, although you may sometimes think them jarring. The letters are warm, real, even raw, and feel ever so (poetically) true. After all, a warm lie, sincerely told, is closer to truth than reality. If there are lies here, they are very warm. An excellent book for one who enjoys poetry and, especially, for one who does not. I waver between rating it 4 or 5 stars. Make that decision for yourself.

[Karin Gottshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

You're young when you start writing poems, never
dreaming a career that leaves you vodka
and Fresca and some take-out Chinese food,
not good, alone with a grainy TV
watching a Perry Mason replay.
- Note to R.H. from Strongsville

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because I know my dad likes it, and the good thing about it was I could see the parts of it that have influenced his writing, mainly the way of starting every piece with a very conversational description of where he is and what he’s doing and what he sees around him. It’s a really simple and beautiful way of keeping your writing grounded in the wonder of the mundane.

The difference is, see, when my dad does that, then he follows it up with something, um, how do i put this… GOOD?

This guy is a loser. He thinks he’s so fuckin edgy and enlightened just because he’s a *~*poet*~* and all he talks about is drinking and fishing and how upset he is that all these women 30 years younger than him keep dumping him. He REALLY fuckin thinks his fishing metaphors are Important. Dude, that just makes you the literary equivalent of the guy holding a fish in his dating profile. Maybe that’s why you can’t get laid.

Oh right, one more thing. As the title suggests, most of the poems are written in the form of letters. So he signs his name at the end. And I gotta tell you, maybe I’m just immature, but I find it really difficult to take these poems seriously when they all end with DICK

[Katie B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to lib out but:

“I believed in the necessity of that suffering world, hoping it would learn not to do it again. But I was young. The world never learns. History has a way of making the past palatable.”

“The war took everything… my faith that change (I really mean loss) is paced slow enough for the blood to adjust.”

“The trek that will always fail… and will always be worthwhile thought it ends a few miles short of your goal.”

“The nation dying from faith in progress.”

“The hurt world worth having.”

“You too will grow calm. You too will see your rage suffer.”

“A nation that is no longer one but only an amorphous collection of failed dreams… there is still a place where the soul doesn’t recognize laws like gravity.”

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book of poetry and come back to it time and time again. It features poems in two loose forms, as the title says, dreams and letters. Dreams are a great source of topics for writers, and they in Hugo produce some marvelously inventive poems. The letters are actual and maybe you might say "poetic" letters he actually sent to friends. I sent letters to friends for many years inspired by these poems as models.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book of Hugo's, and perhaps his most meditative, with poem-letters to Ammons, Snyder, Levertov, and other poets from various places in Montana and the Pacific Northwest. My two favorite poems: "Letter to Birch from Deer Lodge" and "Letter to Logan from Milltown." Highly recommend.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 H895 1977

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leave it to Richard Hugo to craft a letter into a poetic form. He's the master.