landscape and weather

By 1969 Richard Hugo had completed his third and even his fourth book of poems. As we must expect, it is the Northwest poems which conduct Hugo’s trial by landscape, his arraignment by weather, to a further pitch of excruciation: the menace of place is acknowledged to correspond to destructive energies in the self….

—Richard Howard, “Richard Hugo: Why Track Down Unity When The Diffuse Is So Exacting?,” Alone With America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950 (Atheneum, 1980)

best unkept secret

Richard Howard, in an open address, criticized the establishment of National Poetry Month as a betrayal of “the best kept secret of all”—poetry. Every April, since the establishment of National Poetry Month, I receive a call from my local library or high school, asking if I will participate in a reading. How about November? I always ask, and the answer is always the same: People aren’t interested then; April is the month poetry goes public.

April is the cruelest month.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.

—Mary Ruefle, “On Secrets,” Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012)