Sunday, April 12, 2009

Richard Hugo 1974 Madrona Interview





















I first met Richard Hugo in Boulder, Colorado at the 1970 Writers' Conference in The Rocky Mountains--a particularly exciting one with Denise Levertov, Mitch Goodman, Herbert Gold and Isaac Bashevis Singer comprising the roster of writers present during the two weeks of workshops. This was also where I first met Ken Osborne and John Levy and where we talked about the possibility of starting a poetry magazine once Ken and I returned to Seattle and John to Oberlin College. With Ken and I as co-editors and John as contributing editor, Madrona's inaugural issue came out in the summer of 1971 and continued until 1977, ending with Volume 4, Numbers 13 and 14. During its rather short life, Madrona published many known, lesser known and completely unknown poets; it also featured interviews with Richard Hugo, Denise Levertov, David Young, Kenneth O. Hanson, William Stafford, Nelson Bentley and James Weil, among others; most of these interviews were conducted by Ken Osborne, who was the first to suggest starting the magazine and who also carried much of the magazine's financial burden until its demise.

Thanks to Vahan Michaelian who stitched my scans together and to William Michaelian who volunteered to host the 13.3 MB PDF file on his site, you can now read the complete Richard Hugo interview here.

5 comments:

  1. Vassilis, thanks for the background and for making the interview available. I finally had a chance to start reading it this morning, and am up to Page 53. Really enjoying it. I see in the Wikipedia article that Hugo was a bombardier. So was my dad’s brother, who, as a result, is buried in Italy. It has nothing to do with the interview, of course. Anyway, thanks again. Great questions and answers. And the layout makes me look fondly once again at my old Royal, which is glowering at me from a little homemade table about three feet from my right.

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  2. William,

    What if your old Royal and my Remington Quiet-Riter (a 1957 jr high graduation gift from my dad) should come to life and type out the melancholic story of the end befallen them?

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  3. Ah. Quite simply, it would prove the end had not yet come. I expect it to happen any moment now.

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  4. my 1943 Underwood #5
    trumps y'all's Royal & Remington

    &
    if I could find a ribbon
    I'd raise the bet...

    pee est

    I connected with John Levy (via CC) in about 1972 or 3...

    a fine poet

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  5. Ed,

    John's still a fine poet (and Public Defender) living in Tucson; still a great friend!

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