Richard Hugo is most famous for this devastating little villanelle, called The Freaks at Spurgin Field Road . I just finished his first book, A Run of Jacks . I'd no idea it was his first book. I'll excerpt two stanzas from a poem called "Northwest Retrospective: Mark Tobey." (Mark Tobey was a painter.) Beyond Van Allen rings, the stars don't glitter, arrogant as moons. When did we start? Light-years ago. Why did we come? No matter. We are not returning to that world of ditch and strain, the research terms: cryogenic fuels, free radicals, plasma jets, coordinated fusion. Only the last, in all this void, applies. A universe is fusing in our eyes.
ruminations etc.