Essay on Poetic Theory  The Triggering Town (1982)  by Richard
Hugo   Richard Hugo was a Pacific Northwest poet whose work
often used frayed landscapes—real and imagined, external and
internal—as a base from which to explore themes of memory, loss,
and obsession.  His book of poetics, The Triggering Town (1979),
contains a series of essays arguing against the idea that a poet
should “write what you know,” advocating instead an approach to
poetry based on triggering subjects and words. In this title
essay to the collection, Hugo explains triggering subjects,
using the example of towns, as points of entry into the realm of
the imagination. Hugo suggests that new poets take emotional
ownership of an imagined, or barely-known, town, rather than
trying to convey the actual hometown in which “the imagination
cannot free itself to seek the unknowns.”  Once a triggering
subject is located as a base from which to write, Hugo argues
that a poet should turn his attention to the play and music of
the language, allowing a