Images of White Center

William Stafford writing about White Center Poet Richard Hugo

Richard Hugo, as writer and friend, embraced people and places wherever he went. He humanized vast landscapes -- [The Isle of] Skye, Montana, the Northwest coast.

The more austere or remote or forsaken the land or the person, the more certain was Hugo to reach out with love and understanding.
His poems have already made legends of places on the map that before his coming were lost in empty space. The places he lived, or even the places he just visited, became scenes and characters in his poems.

With care and skill he teased stories and lasting allegiances into being. He couldn't let a place or person feel alone. In the area of his strength he is unsurpassed -- sympathy, human perception, glimpses of the epic dimensions of the individual life.