Richard Franklin Hogan was born December 21, 1923, to Esther Clara Monk Hogan and Franklin James Hogan in White Center, a poor workingclass neighborhood on the south side of Seattle, Washington. Hugo's father abandoned his family, and Hugo's mother left the child with his grandparents, who raised Hugo in what he describes as a loveless and often mean environment. Esther Hogan married Herbert F. Hugo in 1927 but never reclaimed her son. Nevertheless, Hugo took his stepfather's name in 1942. After serving in the United States Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1945, where he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal, Hugo attended the University of Washington, receiving both his bachelor's and master's degrees in English on the G.I. Bill, while taking poetry classes with Theodore Roethke. Between 1951 and 1963, Hugo worked as a technical writer for Boeing.

At the age of forty and after publishing his first collection of...