The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir

Upon publication of The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir in 1973, Richard Howard wrote, "Richard Hugo's concern is the unenviable, the unenviable, the unvisited, even the univiting, which he must invest with his own deprivation, his own private war. . . . Each poem adds its incisive particulars to the general stoic wreck; but what startles, then reassures in all this canon of the inconsolable, the unsanctified, the dispossessed, is Hugo's poetics, the analogy of language to experience. . . . Richard Hugo is such an important poet because the difficulties inherent in his art provide him a means of saying what he has to say. It is no accident that he must develop a negative in order to produce a true image."

RICHARD HUGO (1923-1982) was born and raised in White Center, Washington. He flew thirty-three missions in Europe as a bombardier in World War II, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. He returned to Seattle to study with Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington. After thirteen years as a technical writer at Boeing, he became director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana. He lived in Missoula with his wife, Ripley, and two step children. The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir was nominated for the National Book Award. From 1977 to the end of his life, Hugo served as the judge of Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.