“The Truth Is Never Really Enough”: Aslin’s Notes from Hugo’s Classes (with an introduction by Thomas Aslin)

Thomas Aslin holds a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Montana, where he studied with the late Richard Hugo, Madeline DeFrees, and William Kittredge. Aslin’s most recent publications include a second edition of the poetry collection A Moon Over Wings (Tebot Bach, 2013) and a chapbook, Sweet Smoke (2006). Currently he is working on a collection of essays and memoir writing and is nearly finished with a book of poems titled “This, That, and the Other.”

Richard Hugo’s twenty-odd books (two of them posthumous) include The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir (1973), The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (1979), The Right Madness on Skye (1980), and The Real West Marginal Way: A Poet’s Autobiography (1986). Born in White Center, Washington, on 21 December 1923, Hugo served as a bombardier in the Mediterranean during World War II. When he returned home he enrolled at the University of Washington, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in creative writing. After working as a technical writer at Boeing for thirteen years, Hugo was hired at the University of Montana, where he taught for almost eighteen years. He died on 22 October 1982, at the age of fifty-eight.