Journal Three-Max Balderson

I think that I was most interested to find that people would ask Hugo how working "in the real world" was different than working as a creative writing teacher. Me and Hugo both had very similar reactions to this. It's honestly a shocking and fairly insulting question to all academics. Hugo brings up direct comparisons between his two occupations, and I think it helps us to realize an important truth. That they both are work, and the both are very real and involved lines of work. Of course he is passionate about poetry but we learn that doesn't make his teaching job a dreamland.

Out of the whole book one of the most useful chapters, for me, was chapter 5 Nuts and Bolts. The about this chapter is that it is very tongue in cheek. If you use this chapter like a checklist in your poetry writing, then you probably haven't learned anything from it. I don't use a number 2 pencil when I write poetry. I use a mechanical one. Does it matter? I don't think so. The point of chapter 5 is that we are supposed to learn to place restrictions on ourselves. Be consistent if you want consistent results. I write in the same spot, with the same pencil, at the same time everyday now. You could say it sounds superstitious, but it's been making the river rise a lot more.

Richard Hugo being cool