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 HITS |
Photo by Felicia Mitchell
Ruta Maya, Austin, 1 August 1998
I first ran across Albert Huffstickler's poems in the pages of Christopher M's magazine First Class three or four years ago, and what happened is the same thing that happened the first time I ran across Charles Bukowski, T.L. Kryss, Maia Penfold and a handful of other poets--I knew I was reading someone I would never get enough of, and that if I had a book of their poems in hand, I would read it cover to cover, year after year, book after book. I've had a lot of Huffstickler in my hands since then, and I'm ready for a lot more.
Albert Huffstickler is like a character in an Edward Hopper all-night diner, suddenly coming alive, swivelling off his chrome stool, and walking out the door; lighting a cigarette, blowing a jet of smoke into a vast sun-filled New Mexico sky, and then drifting off on a current of reverie and dream. Huffstickler's language is balm to the downtrodden. His quiet insights reconstruct shattered lives. He is a man whose dreams and aspirations never quite gelled, a man who has learned the art of spinning isolation into solitude, a man who much of his life rode a horse with no name thru dark canyons of mental anguish and physical pain and came out the far side cloaked not in bitterness but in muted compassion. He is a healer who restores hope without making outlandish promises. He's travelled the high road between life and death, and over coffee in either Burger King, the Cactus Cafe or Austin's Ruta Maya Coffee House, he smiles at the waitress, taps the ash off his cigarette, and quietly informs us that death's no big deal, it's sort of like returning home after a long absence. He reduces death to plausibility without removing it from the realm of magic and so makes life bearable.
Albert Huffstickler is 72 years old and has been writing outstanding poetry for at least 50 of those years. And he continues to write, his powers undiminished. Most of his poems have appeared in obscure little magazines and short-run chapbooks. He is, much more than Bukowski, the poet laureate of the common man, which only sounds like a cliche if you haven't read him. In Atom Mind, a Mother Road Publications magazine based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albert has this to say about himself:
"I don't want to make a big thing out of it...but every time I am asked to present myself as Somebody, I freak out. I prefer to be the Nobody behind the poem or behind the story. Because, underneath it all, and despite any reassurances I get from friends, family, enemies, I do not think I am Somebody. I am a world-class Nobody. I do not exist. That is why I work so hard on the writing. If I can't exist as myself, then at least I can manifest. Everything I write could be titled, Another Attempt to Define Who I Am. Because that's what I do. Oh, I rely on my past, on fact, often as not, but the interpretation I give it is out of the moment, how I see things that particular day. All my life I have admired and wondered at people who presented themselves with assurance, who knew who they were. Because I didn't, really. The truth is that I am a fiction of my own invention. I am the Poet. And what is the Poet? He is that thing that produces poetry. Not much to hang a life on. I am not a specialist of any kind. I am not an authority on anything. I have had no training. I have lived out my life doing menial labor of one sort or another, restaurants a lot of the time, because I didn't have any specialty and didn't seem to be able to come up with the determination and the discipline to develop one. I have limped through life on the crutch of my ability to use language. It is all I have. It is all I am. It is all I can do. So when suddenly I am asked to tell the story of my life as though I were Somebody, naturally I freak out. I am not Somebody and therefore I cannot tell you the story of my life. I can only tell you some things about myself. If my life had plot and continuity, I would have written it long ago. And sold it. And probably made a fortune in this age where no one really knows who he is. Yes, it's true. Everybody is really like me. They don't know who they are. But the difference between us is that I know I don't know who I am whereas most people have acquired a label, a role, that they think is them and therefore they assume that they know who they are. I will not be trapped in that No-Man's Land. I cannot tell you who I am and I cannot tell you the story of my life. I can only tell you some things about myself."
So there you have it. Like any poet truly worth his salt, there is no need to know where Albert Huffstickler was born, what schools he attended, or how many times he was married. If any of this is worth knowing, it shows up in the poems in a context that gives it real meaning. Here are some of those poems:
Arby's Brenda
(from Atom Mind magazine)
I'm not really sure I could live with happy people.
The small, middle aged woman across from me on the bus
wears an Arby's nametag.
Her name is Brenda and she wears the bright,
impossible smile of lonely people everywhere,
that smile that's both an invitation to kindness
and a shield against rejection, a smile much like my own.
I think of all the middle aged people in the world
who work at fast food places and ride the bus home evenings.
I think of small cluttered rooms with black and white TVs
and windows overlooking an alley,
how we never think of pale, middle aged people
who work in fast food places dying of love
or nursing secret ambitions to be president
or fly a jet, be a movie star or write a bestseller.
The truth is (and here's the tragedy)
we never think of these people at all.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't possible
for a person to live out his whole life
without giving a moment's thought
to a single middle aged employee of a fast food place anywhere.
Now tell me this: Is it just me or doesn't it seem to you
that there's something impossibly wrong somewhere?
May 8, 1992
St. Francis Was A Flower Child (from Damaged Goods)
Here's how it is:
there's one part of us
that stays innocent no matter what.
Now, that innocent part of us
takes everything as it sees it.
You meet a cheerful guy,
you think he's cheerful all the way through.
But then gradually you get to know him
and he starts telling you how depressed he really is.
Bummer.
Or you meet a guy that's all together
and you think that all-together
holds to the very core of his being.
Then gradually
he starts telling you his fears, doubts, confusions
and the next thing you know
he's just like you.
What you learn and forget over and over is:
that perfect face you see on first encounter
is flawed--just like yours.
Everybody is hanging on.
I tell my therapist almost everything
but I don't ask too many questions.
I need that all-knowingness.
I need her to have it together.
We all need for somebody to have it together
even if it's only God.
That way we can maintain
that innocence that we need so desperately
to survive in a world
where the sharks outnumber the minnows,
where mercy is considered a weakness
and a loving heart a deformity.
In our hearts,
we all need desperately to be flower children
because when the flower dies,
we go with it.
August 17, 1995
The Song (from Damaged Goods)
My brother and I sang and sang
growing up, sang love songs from
operettas, sang pop, sang country
western. We didn't think about
it, we just sang because we liked
the way the sound came out of us,
didn't think about the words, just
sang because it felt good to have
music come out of your body and
we tied our feelings to the music
and let it all go like a kite
sailing up, up out of sight. No
use asking us why, we just did
it, just sang and sang. And
sang our way then into another
time where music was scarce and
it was harder to find the music
to tie the feelings to. I don't
remember when I stopped singing.
Jack stopped when he died, not
forty yet, still a young man.
Tonight I sit and think about time
and music and where people's lives
go and it's night and there's a
small breeze and I think about
people like Pavarotti and Louis
Armstrong and Ray Charles, singers
who can put people's joy and
sorrow into music and sing it
for them and I believe to my soul
that there is no more wonderful
thing to do in this world than
to sing and that of all the things
in the world a man can do, there
is no more honorable occupation.
La Dolce Vita
Austin, Texas
May 13, 1998
Looking At The Ground
(from Looking at the Ground)
I've noticed lately
that, after 15 years on the job,
I don't look at the ground so much anymore.
You see, when you're broke, you're always looking at the ground.
This is not due to humility.
It's because you're always looking for things,
things that other people have dropped or thrown away--
money first, of course, but also cigarettes,
like a half-empty pack that someone has dropped or discarded
(in more desperate straits, a long butt),.
refundable pop bottles, aluminum cans,
anything that shines or beckons to be used again.
Life is a perpetual treasure hunt when you're broke.
Maybe, underneath it all, you're really looking for redemption
but for the time being you'll settle for
anything that's spendable, edible or smokeable.
Once I found a billfold lying on the ground by a self-service Post
Office.
Good citizen that I am, I carefully extracted the cash ($35)
and dropped the wallet in the mail slot.
It was like unemployment insurance.
I didn't have to go to Manpower for three days.
My mother used to say, "The Lord takes care of fools and drunks."
I don't think he takes such good care of poor people.
They're on their own.
Eyes on the ground, eternally searching for the next good thing,
that thing that will spell security for a minute or an hour,
a cup of coffee in a diner and, with luck, a cigarette to smoke
with it,
the warmth of a lighted room purchased at the price of your last 50 ¢
It's the cold you fear--and those long empty spaces.
So you walk along looking at the ground, following an invisible trail
down streets, up alleys, across parking lots and on,
moving with that patient, solemn shuffle
that's the universal gait of the poor man--
eyes on the ground, that little piece of ground right in front of
his feet,
the only piece of earth in this whole world
he can call his own.
Cafe du Jour
Austin, Texas
January 27, 1990
First Day At The Furniture Factory
(from Looking at the Ground)
It was a long day.
I'd spent it hauling boxes on a handtruck from the plastics
department to assembly.
I'd caught the 6:30 bus at the Mall near my apartment, trans-
ferred in town and was barely on time.
I rode bus number 13 and was assigned to Department 76. It
was September 13. An auspicious beginning.
Sometime during the day it started to rain and it rained inter-
mittently from then on.
At 4 o'clock, quitting time, I was already thinking of hot
supper and bed
but then they asked me to work over till six and since it was my
first day, I didn't want to say no.
By 6 o'clock I was really tired and it was raining again.
The old buildings looked like grey consumptive ghosts in the
fading light as autumn fell through the rain.
The bus passed at six on the dot so I ran for the front gate.
It was closed. I learned later that they closed it at 4.
So, rather than miss my bus, I climbed the fence--
which was OK except that I caught my shirt on the barbed wire
at the top
and when I landed with a thud on the other side, my shirt was
missing a sleeve and my arm was bleeding.
And the bus was gone.
So I started thumbing with the rain coming down harder than ever
and the carlights slashing the darkness as they whizzed past me
spraying light and water.
I waited a long time in the dark with the rain seeping into me.
Finally a Chicano in a pickup stopped and, though it was out of
his way, dropped me in town
where I stumbled into the Greyhound station, got coffee
and sat out front smoking and shivering, waiting for my bus,
peering out at the world from the dark cave of my skull,
wondering what the poor people were doing.
October, 1974
OK. There's a taste of Huffstickler. I highly recommend you get hold of some of his books. A complete list can be obtained from Huffstickler at the address below, but here are a few I highly recommend:
THE WANDER YEARS, SRLR Press, $12.00.
WORKING ON MY DEATH CHANT, Backyard Press, $15.00.
MORTALITY AND MADNESS: Bus Stations I Have Known,
Press of Circumstance, $5.
DAMAGED GOODS, Press of Circumstance, $7.
IN THE CLEARING, Four-Sep Publications, $7.
Order books directly from:
Albert Huffstickler
312 E. 43rd St. (#103)
Austin, TX 78751
Make checks payable to Albert Huffstickler. Postage is included in the price, and you get signed editions mailed out the same day the order is received.
Order now. You won't be sorry.
Also, check out the web site someone put together for Huff:
http://www.geocities.com/albert_huffstickler/