The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

Rating:
Summary: Learn to write by writing
Review: This collection of essays comprise the single best "anti-How To" book on writing. Hugo cuts to the chase and encourages us to discover what's at stake in our writing, and to allow the poem or story to tell itself in the way it wants to be told. I read this one annually, just to remind myself to trust the story -- I don't have to "manage" it.

Rating:
Summary: Practical, easy to use information in an entertaining voice.
Review: Twenty years after it's original copyright, Hugo's book The Triggering Town is still the best hands on approach to writing poetry ever published. Hugo's advice is understandable and relatively painless to apply. His philosophy of allowing poems to write themselves is the surest road to music and truth.