Henry Hughes Poetry & Prose

New poem, “Without Half the Money,” breaking bad in the Oregon Coast Range

Without Half the Money

Oregon Coast Range, 1997

Morning’s mossy orchard

totally spidered. We’d get high,

watching them drop and weave.

Bored by noon, you’d stick-rip a web,

scrambling a repair, the way storms

sparked us into cold rain

to fix a crushed fence,

keeping out the town’s careless

and curious.

Don’t worry, you’d wave

to the sheriff driving by,

fans humming, ammonia, methanol,

propane tanks valved blue,

spiders plucking threads so sticky and smooth

even they could hardly move.

Red-stained coffee filters

that smelled like piss.

Couched in our gauzy gray parlor,

young angels soared and dangled

until we sucked them skinny. Pipes, bras, cash

and a bunch of trash you’d burn on Sunday,

wondering why I’d drive off

in the middle of the night

without half the money.
Published in J Journal: New Writing on Justice

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May 5, 2023

New story, “Mussel Bed,” the dating dimensions of science, sex, and seafood

We parked in the driveway of her ex-husband, so I wanted to stay busy, carry something, but didn’t know where to start. It was drizzling. The students pulled up behind us looking tired and puffy, and Jasmine gathered them in and started joking. “What’s the matter? Enflamed dura?” They laughed. She turned to me and shook her head, “Hangovers.”

Read the whole story in The Seattle Star

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May 5, 2023

Review of Chris Dombrowski’s “The River You Touch” in Harvard Review

“Henry Thoreau wanted his nature-based Walden to be about everything, but he never had a wife and kids. Chris Dombrowski’s memoir about life in rural Montana—with all its hunting, fishing, foraging, philosophy, and home economics—is deepened by the presence of his wife, Mary, an elementary school teacher, and the children they share.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

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May 3, 2023

New Poem ‘After We Lost the House’

Painted Bride Quarterly has published a new poem by Henry.

Henry Hughes
After We Lost the House

the deck I built, your mother’s plantings,

blossoms and birds carved 

into closet doors for the room 

you were gonna paint purple.  

It all went red on my half-time,

then Mom got sick and the car died.

 

Winter gnawed through that drafty trailer 

and the drunk-ruckus apartment on Ninth,

until I got the other job and this place, 

where you can walk to school 

and help Mom sow a small garden. 

 

The landlord doesn’t want a handyman, just a check 

every month.  But at night, in the garage 

over a makeshift bench, I build birdhouses—

top-grade plywood, stainless steel screws, 

tin-faced nesting holes

nothing’ll chew through.

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October 10, 2022

Rocky and Rose

A short story by Henry Hughes in Harvard Review.

“Rocky started his cannery shift at eight in the evening and finished at three in the morning, then went straight to the river, swinging big streamers with glow-in-the-dark heads, which some fly fishermen considered cheating. Those same men would start their mornings watching Rocky boot across the pasture carrying a couple of steelhead or a spring Chinook. He walked quickly to his truck, slowing down only if his heart raced…”
Keep reading

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September 12, 2020

Review of John N. Maclean’s “Home Waters” in Harvard Review

“John N. Maclean begins his memoir fly fishing on Montana’s Big Blackfoot River. Many years earlier, he had asked his father, Norman, why they no longer fished that stretch of river. His father had explained that it was because he didn’t know the new landowner, but the son also claims that his father ‘held many memories close, in a kind of time vault, to be reshaped and burnished without the nuisance of updates.'”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

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September 6, 2020

Angler’s Journal Feature on Artist, Paul Gentry

*Salmon Rising*, wood engraving by Paul Gentry.

Salmon Rising is one of a dozen images Gentry engraved and printed for two collections of angling literature that I edited for Knopf’s Everyman’s Library series. His work as a furniture maker, potter, photographer and painter have earned him local attention, and his wood engravings are national treasures. Several universities and institutions, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the Library of Congress, hold his artwork; Montana State University recently commissioned a set of prints for its famous Trout and Salmonid Collection.

Paul Gentry and Henry Hughes talk art and life at Gentry’s home.

Read Henry’s full article here in the Angler’s Journal

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August 27, 2019

Review of John Larison’s novel, “Whiskey When We’re Dry” in Harvard Review

“John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry has all the classic elements of a Western saga: endlessly promising yet punishing land, tobacco and booze, corrupt lawmen and kindly prostitutes, good guys and bad guys with guns blazing. But it’s the particular story of our hero, Jesse, and her gender fluidity that makes this a truly excellent book.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

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May 29, 2019

Review of Tracy Smith’s collection of poetry, “Wade in the Water” in Harvard Review

Tracy K. Smith’s fourth book of poetry ends with “An Old Story” of terrible times. Echoing Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” Smith bemoans a ravaged land and rising hate—the “worst in us having taken over / And broken the rest utterly down.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

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April 11, 2019

Montana State University Library Trout & Salmonid Lecture 2019

Exploring literature, art, and popular culture, writer and professor Henry Hughes discusses the delightfully slippery world at the confluence of piscine and human existence
in his presentation, “The Sensual Fish,” delivered on April 2, 2019, at the Rialto in downtown Bozeman, Montana. Through fishing, Hughes crosses boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, making connections between the salty pleasures and tensions of human and fish life. According to events coordinator, Ann Vinciguerra, “Henry Hughes’ fascinating and humorous discussion delighted a full house at the Rialto.” Each year, the Montana State University Trout and Salmonid Lecture Series hosts a world-renowned speaker and offers a free lecture to the university and Bozeman communities.

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April 2, 2019

New poem, “Without Half the Money,” breaking bad in the Oregon Coast Range

Without Half the Money

New story, “Mussel Bed,” the dating dimensions of science, sex, and seafood

Review of Chris Dombrowski’s “The River You Touch” in Harvard Review

New Poem ‘After We Lost the House’

Rocky and Rose

Review of John N. Maclean’s “Home Waters” in Harvard Review

Angler’s Journal Feature on Artist, Paul Gentry

Review of John Larison’s novel, “Whiskey When We’re Dry” in Harvard Review

Review of Tracy Smith’s collection of poetry, “Wade in the Water” in Harvard Review

Montana State University Library Trout & Salmonid Lecture 2019

Fishing Poetry

Upcoming Henry Hughes Readings

Short List of Past Events

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