Huff

1998.....from Vagabond.

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."