The Triggering Town

1. Distinguish between the triggering subject and the generated subject

A poem can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or "causes" the poem to be written, and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing.

The starting point. The triggering subject is merely the spark that gets the pen moving, not the final destination of the poem. Beginners often make the mistake of staying stubbornly loyal to this initial topic, like "Autumn Rain," and end up writing dry, strained abstractions when they run out of things to say. To write a dynamic poem, you must realize that the triggering subject is simply a pretext to start writing.

The real subject. The true subject of the poem is discovered only through the physical process of writing itself. To find it, the writer must be willing to abandon the triggering subject the moment the language suggests a new, unexpected direction.

• Never feel obligated to stay on your initial topic.
• Let the next sentence jump to something entirely different.
• Trust that the music of the words will hold the sequence together.

The leap of faith. By letting go of the initiating subject, the poet allows the subconscious imagination to take over. This requires a healthy streak of creative arrogance, assuming that whatever you put down belongs simply because you are the one who put it there. The adhesive force of a poem is not logical connection, but your unique way of writing.

2. Prioritize the music of language over literal truth

The poet’s relation to the triggering subject should never be as strong as (must be weaker than) his relation to his words.

Music shapes meaning. A writer must decide whether music must conform to truth, or truth to music. Hugo argues passionately for the latter, asserting that the sounds, rhythms, and tonalities of words are far more important than literal accuracy. If you prioritize the music of language, those who find life bewildering can fight through draft after draft to find unexpected emotional resonance.

Violating the facts. If a poem needs the word "black" for its music, but the real-world grain elevator was yellow, the elevator must become black in the poem. You owe reality absolutely nothing, but you owe the truth of your feelings everything.

• Single-syllable words convey toughness, rigidity, and raw honesty.
• Multisyllabic words soften the impact, showing tenderness and civilization.
• Sound associations (like "cascade" leading to "suicide") generate unexpected emotional depth.

The power of sound. When you prioritize sound over logic, you free yourself from the limitations of conscious thought. The music of language acts as a vehicle that carries the writer into deeper, more authentic psychological territory. By focusing on the play of words rather than their literal value, you allow the imagination to run unguarded and free.

3. Use the unfamiliar to claim emotional ownership

The poem is always in your hometown, but you have a better chance of finding it in another.

The strange town. Writing about your actual hometown is incredibly difficult because you are burdened by complicated, real-life emotional responses and historical facts. A strange town, glimpsed briefly from a car window, provides a stable set of physical knowns—a water tower, a closed movie house—without any of the paralyzing emotional baggage.

Taking possession. The poet must take immediate, temporary emotional possession of this new town, treating it as if they have lived there all their life. Because you owe the town's actual details nothing, you are free to manipulate them to serve the poem's emotional needs.

• Turn the local gas station attendant into a drunk if the poem needs it.
• Use the town's physical landmarks as a secure base of operations.
• Let the lack of personal association free your imagination to seek unknowns.

Creating a stable base. By anchoring the poem in a specific, imagined, or newly discovered place, you establish a creative stability. This stable base gives you the confidence and freedom to take wild imaginative flights without getting lost. The triggering town ultimately chooses you, serving as a stage setting for your deepest, most intimate hunks of self.

4. Embrace creative, unexamined assumptions to build a stable base

Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right or sane.

Weird assumptions. Every writer operates under a set of highly specific, often bizarre assumptions that lie behind their work. These assumptions—such as believing you are an outcast returned to a town, or that the local church is always empty—provide the psychological framework necessary for composition. They are the unexamined foundations of a successful writing operation.

Suspending self-doubt. It is vital that a poet does not question these assumptions while in the middle of writing. Words thrive in the ridiculous, obsessive, and playful areas of our minds, and analyzing your assumptions too early will only paralyze your creative impulse.

• Assume you are the only stranger in a tightly knit community.
• Believe that a hermit living on the outskirts eats only fried potatoes.
• Imagine that the sky turns a depressing gray every Sunday at 4 P.M.

The creative payoff. These arbitrary beliefs act as stable parameters that guide the poem's direction. By accepting these weird premises without reservation, you create a safe playground where your inner life can safely reveal itself. Once the poem is finished, you can worry about being right or sane, but never before.

5. Train the ear and bypass the conscious mind through strict constraints

With the real problems gone the poet is free to say what he never expected and always wanted to say.

Therapy for the ear. Theodore Roethke was a master teacher because he focused entirely on the music of language rather than intellectual explication. He taught students to fall in love with the physical sounds of words, treating poetry writing as a clinic for auditory training. To Roethke, the physical rhythm of a line was the very heart and soul of the art.

The power of exercises. To break a writer's rigid attachment to "meaning," teachers can assign highly restrictive exercises with arbitrary rules. By forcing a student to use specific word lists, strict syllable counts, and complex rhyming patterns, the conscious mind becomes occupied with technical problem-solving.

• Use a fixed list of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
• Adhere to a strict four-beat line and specific stanza structures.
• Attempt to write a poem that is intentionally "meaningless."

Unlocking the gold. While the writer is busy trying to solve these mechanical constraints, their deep-seated emotional blocks disappear. The result is often their most imaginative and honest work, proving that focusing on sound and form actually generates genuine meaning. By giving up what you think you have to say, you find something far better.

6. Eliminate explanatory connectives to let the imagination leap

Style and substance may represent a class system. The imagination is a democracy.

Avoiding grammarphobia. Writers often use words of temporality, causality, and opposition (like "while," "because," "but," and "as") out of a nervous desire to make logical connections clear. However, these signposts dilute the drama of a statement and indicate a momentary lack of faith in the reader's imagination.

The democratic imagination. Removing these connectives forces the reader's mind to bridge the gaps, making the transition between images far more active and exciting. In the world of the imagination, all things have equal value, and they do not need to be logically justified.

• Replace "while the bus lurches away" with "The bus lurches away."
• Eliminate "because" to let two distinct images stand side-by-side as equals.
• Avoid using "so" and "such" for cheap, unearned emphasis.

The adhesive force. When you stop explaining how things are connected, your unique voice and vision become the sole adhesive force holding the poem together. This stylistic leap of faith is what ultimately defines your personal way of writing. By letting the images collide without explanation, you create a far more dramatic and human experience.

7. Write to discover what you feel, not to record what you know

More often the poem is the way the poet says he feels when he can’t find out what his real feelings are.

The illusion of intent. Many beginners sit down to write believing they already know what they want to say, searching only for the words to fit their preconceived message. This approach is backward; real writing is a process of discovery, not transcription. You cannot write a good poem if you are unwilling to surprise yourself.

Surrogate feelings. A good poem sounds deeply meant, but it is rarely a direct record of the poet's actual, real-world emotions. Instead, the act of writing allows the poet to create surrogate feelings that help them navigate their inner chaos.

• Give up the moral obligation to remain true to the historical facts.
• Allow the words to lead you to unexpected emotional realizations.
• Accept that the finished poem may reveal a truth you didn't know you possessed.

Accepting the self. Through draft after draft, the writer slowly learns to accept their life as valid. Writing becomes a convoluted but necessary way of realizing what animals know by instinct: that your life is all you have. When you write, you are momentarily telling the world and yourself that neither of you need any reason to be but the one you had all along.

8. Understand your poetic lineage as either an insider or an outsider

To feel that you are a wrong thing in a right world should lead a poet to be highly self-critical in the act of writing.

Krebs vs. Snopes. Hugo divides American poets into two psychological camps based on classic literary characters: Krebs (the alienated insider) and Snopes (the desperate outsider). Krebs poets feel the world is wrong, while Snopes poets feel they themselves are fundamentally flawed. This self-image deeply colors how a poet handles success and failure.

The critic within. Feeling like a "wrong thing in a right world" (the Snopes stance) can be a powerful creative advantage. This deep sense of personal worthlessness and shame often breeds a highly self-critical inner editor, forcing the poet to revise relentlessly.

• Krebs poets (like Stevens or Ginsberg) handle success more easily because they don't feel they've betrayed their roots.
• Snopes poets (like Roethke or Lowell) struggle with acclaim, feeling it violates their heritage of failure.
• Self-hatred and the fear of success can lead to creative blocks if not channeled into the work.

The mask of the poem. Every poem is a slight modification of the mask the poet wants to wear. Over a lifetime of writing, the self grows more worthy of the mask, and the mask comes closer to fitting the face, leading to a quiet, hard-won self-acceptance. The happiness a poet finds is simply a different way they have come to feel about themselves.

9. Creative writing classes validate individual identity in an anonymous world

A creative-writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters.

The threat of anonymity. Modern life, with its massive systems, real estate developments, and bureaucratic institutions, constantly tells us that our individual lives do not matter. In this environment, the apparent narcissism of creative writers is actually a desperate struggle for personal survival. We must insist on our identity or risk disappearing into the crowd.

A safe haven. A creative writing classroom provides a rare space where a student's unique, subjective experience is treated with dignity and importance. It offers a platform to share personal truths without the pressure of being academically or logically "right."

• Save years of wasted effort by learning what not to write.
• Experience a microscopic moment of personal triumph through a single good poem.
• Learn that you are someone, and you have an absolute right to your life.

The green wall. Ultimately, these classes are not just about producing professional writers, but about helping people climb over the cold, vacant walls of modern isolation. They offer a vital chance to celebrate the simple, obsessive love of being alive. In a world that tries to erase individual differences, a writing class insists that your life is all you've got.

10. Real-world obsessions and emotional vulnerability are the true sources of poetry

But no job accounts for the impulse to find and order those bits and pieces of yourself that can come out only in the most unguarded moments, in the wildest, most primitive phrases we shout alone at the mirror.

The real world. Hugo rejects the idea that academia is less "real" than the corporate world, noting that a university classroom is filled with raw human suffering, hope, and vulnerability. Whether working at Boeing or teaching at Montana, a poet's true material comes from their inner obsessions, not their job title. The job is just what you do to make a living; the writing is how you survive.

The Admiral's lesson. The story of "The Admiral"—a paranoid, impoverished squatter evicted by Boeing—demonstrates how real-world encounters feed the poetic imagination. The Admiral's desperate, eloquent letters and his tragic pride in his worthless possessions reveal the universal human need to scream back at the fates.

• Real-world experiences must be forgotten and modified before they can become art.
• The imagination naturally converts historical facts into emotional truths.
• Vulnerability and a lack of a "cold exterior" are essential for receiving poetry.

The human bond. Ultimately, poetry is a way of acknowledging our shared, fragile humanity as we all head into the dark. By remaining emotionally open and vulnerable, the poet speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves, creating a lasting monument to the human heart. No job can modify or destroy this primitive, beautiful impulse.