Grade 6-12 lesson plans for the poems “Trout” and “Letter to Mantsch from Havre”

Jean Croxton, English Teacher
Big Sky High School, Missoula, Montana

How to see a Trout

Most teenagers need a way to approach a poem – a way to see it, an invitation to enter the poem. One way to enter a Hugo poem like “Trout” (and many others in this collection) is to look closely at the observations of the poet. After an initial hearing/reading of the poem “Trout”, listen/read again looking for the details of Hugo’s close observation with specific aspects in mind. Working in small groups would be a good way to involve all students in the discussion. Discuss the definitions of metaphor and simile beforehand.

Trout

Richard Hugo

Quick and yet he moves like silt.
I envy dreams that see his curving
silver in the weeds. When stiff as snags
he blends with certain stones.
When evening pulls the ceiling tight
across his back he leaps for bugs.

I wedged hard water to validate his skin-
call it chrome, say red is on
his side like apples in a fog, gold
gills. Swirls always looked one way
until he carved the water into any
kinds of current with his nerve-edged nose.

And I have stared at steelhead teeth
to know him, savage in his sea-run growth,
to drug his facts, catalog his fins
with wings and arms, to bleach the black
back of the first I saw and frame the cries
that sent him snaking to oblivions of cress.

List details of color:
Starting with color gives the students a firm footing with the poem. They all can and will list chrome, red, black, silver, gold. This will allow further questions for a closer observation: How does Hugo describe the specific red of the trout? (An opportunity to review metaphor.) When does the trout appear silver? How does the color of the trout change at moments in the poem?

List details of movement:
What does the trout do in the poem? After the students have a list, ask the questions of close observation. How does silt move, and how do you visualize “moves like silt”? Why would a trout remain “stiff as snags”? How does this still image compare to “carves the current” and “leaps for bugs”? What do we learn about the business of living for a trout? At the close of the poem, the trout is “snaking to oblivions of cress”. Why does Hugo end with the trout disappearing from view?

Who is speaking?
List the verbs that tell us what the speaker in the poem is doing. How carefully does the speaker/poet look to see trout? The speaker stares, validates, catalogues, and frames. This is language used in scientific study. Yet, is the trout a specimen to the speaker? How does the speaker feel about the trout? How do you know this? It’s dangerous to discuss feelings with teenagers, but Hugo is unsentimental in his pursuit. The respect for and awe of the trout come naturally from close observation, and teenagers will see it.

Writing exercises:
Studying Hugo’s observations can provide an invitation to write for students. Though “writing a poem” is daunting for many teenagers, writing a close observation of a subject, modeled on Hugo’s technique, would be less so.

Looking closely at Hugo’s close observation will work with many of the poems in the collection. The poems of place, especially, lend themselves to this activity.

A reading of Letter to Mantsch from Havre

High school students will need little help entering Hugo’s “Letter to Mantsch from Havre”. It is straightforward and narrative for the most part, and features a familiar subject – remembrance of a softball game and the powerful bat of Mantsch. However, the poem, like the ball, “sailing like a determined moon”, moves up and out to say something more. It’s that “more” that deserves a closer look with students.

In small groups, students first need to get the story straight – how the poet has returned to Havre, and remembers the feats of Mantsch long before. He then writes to Mike Mantsch.

One of the first questions, is why does Hugo write to Mantsch? He begins the letter, “We didn’t have a chance”, and ends it, “Well done, Mike.” What happens in-between?

The other story: take the following lines from the poem and discuss:

What we do, well done or not, seems futile.
in a world that feels, with reason, it has little chance,

How do the efforts of ordinary people, like barbers and small town ballplayers, seem futile? Do you think people in Havre may feel outside the world? What large issues in the world today make us feel powerless, and our efforts futile?

Now look at the following lines:

Style in anything is worth our trying, even if we fail.
it is our pleasure to care about things well done.
lovelier than a girl climbs on a horse
lovelier than star

What kind of world do these lines describe? What, in the poem, is done with style?

Why do you think Hugo puts the ordinary (“a girl climbs on a horse”) together with the universal (“lovelier than star”)? What do you think Hugo wants to say to Mantsch, and to the reader, about ordinary life and the larger world?

Writing exercises:

Hugo’s many letter poems can be used as a writing prompt with students. The letter form is familiar and every teenager has someone to whom she/he would like to write.

Some guidelines:

Write a letter to someone you know well and with whom you have shared an experience or experiences. Don’t be afraid to use names of places and people in your poems. Don’t be afraid to write about ordinary, day-to-day life, with all the details you can think of. Try your hand at metaphor to help create images in your letter. Don’t worry about the “larger issues” the poem may bring up until you have finished a draft.

These titles are suggested companion books for the CDs: Check your local library, use WorldCat’s “Find in a Library” to list Hugo’s books in your local library via your zip code, or click the link to order from Fact and Fiction Books in Missoula: