I’d heard Richard Hugo’s name mentioned for a while as a writer whose work I should check out. Most recently, I was reading Charles D’Ambrosio’s Loitering, due out in the fall on Tin House, and found a lengthy essay using Hugo’s poem “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” as the jumping-off point for a long meditation on America, economic collapse, and national anxiety.  This was the mephorical straw to my to-read list’s camel’s back, and I ended up ordering his essay collection […]