Remembering Huff

Remembering Huff


BY CLAY SMITH AND RIC WILLIAMS


Albert Huffstickler displayed the human heart and soul in all its naked neediness. In his brilliantly straightforward poetry, Huff offered us a strong cup of deep compassion, never judging the madness or loneliness we experience in the darkness of our shame as anything other than our shared condition. No contemporary poet surpassed Huff in his tender, clear-eyed portrayal of human persistence in the face of the everyday abuses we suffer upon this rock we call home. He spoke directly to the heart that Faulkner knew. Huff persisted in believing we could be better to each other, that we all deserved love and respect, that we all mattered.

That much was apparent at Huff's memorial service on Monday night at Hyde Park Theatre. An overflow crowd, so large not everyone could get into the theatre, listened as Huff's friend and fellow poet Joe Hoppe got up and recounted that Huff was "a good example of how to be a poet, and how to be out in the world," which sometimes seem like mutually exclusive things. Huff's daughter Margaret Huffstickler, a singer who lives in Washington, D.C., sang a cycle of songs that her father had written (when she was a master's candidate in voice, she asked him for some lyrics and he said, characteristically, "I don't write to specifications.") Some 25 poets read from their own work or from Huff's.

Below are comments gleaned from the memories of poets and friends who knew Huff and his work. Rather than give you the facts of Huff's life, facts that no matter how detailed would not show you who he was or why he is so loved and why he matters in American letters, we give you these poetic impressions that speak to a deeper truth than the facts. It is what all good poetry does.

Beverly Spicer: More often than not, I'd be going about my business at the Julio's Complex, as we called the district of restaurants, grocery, and coffee shops at 43rd and Duval just across from his apartment on Avenue H, and Albert would be sitting outside of Dolce Vita having his smokes and coffee, drawing and writing. He'd see me from afar, and then toss back his head and emit that wry, almost screeching chuckle of his. I might make some dancing gesture from across the street in return, or roll my eyes dramatically, or just yell, "Alberto!" He had his periphery covered and knew us all, knew all about us. I loved him dearly -- that crusty, sometimes crude, incredibly eloquent, artistic soul.

Mark Smith: Huff was a poet: first, foremost, and only, a poet. He wrote constantly, compulsively, generating one, two, three, or more poems every single day for at least four decades. Many of Huff's poems are memorable, moving, powerful, but all of them are notable as an accomplishment of sheer will. Huff's life's work deserves a place among the achievements of other great outsider artists like Simon Rodia's Watts Towers or Howard Finster's Paradise Garden.

Ed Buffaloe: I first met Huff in 1968, when I was 17 and he was 41. At the time he was writing porno novels for $200 each, which seemed like an avant-garde sort of thing to do. He was also writing a lot of poetry, which was being published several times per year in ARX, a local small press magazine I was affiliated with. He didn't take much notice of me at the time, but I was in awe of him because I thought his poetry was some of the best we ever published. Huff was pretty much uneditable -- he didn't take advice from anyone regarding his poems. He knew exactly how he wanted them to be. One time he showed me a rejection letter from an editor, who told him if he would just delete the last line she would accept his poem. I read the poem and said, "Huff, she's right -- that last line is just an afterthought." But Huff said, "Nah, somebody else'll take it." And they did.

Diane Fleming: The last time I saw Huff was 10am, the day of his death. His bony knees held up the hospital blanket like a little tent. He had a tube in his nose. I wanted to say, "I love you," but I didn't. The first time I saw Huff was three years earlier on my first date with Larry Thoren. Larry brought me to Dolce Vita for coffee but his real plan was to "pass me by" Huff for his approval. In between my first and last meetings with Huff, I'd visit him at his coffeeshop table and he'd say, "Have you written any new stories? Have you started a novel yet? Are you sending out poems and stories? It's important, you know, to keep things out there." When I told him I was in graduate school, he snarled, "John finished that Masters program and his writing lost its grit." Huff's writing never lost its grit. He wrote aching sweet poems, his words taut and resonant like violin strings just twanged.

Larry Thoren: One of the things that always impressed me about Huff was his generosity. For a while in the 1990s, I seemed to make a point of being broke. Many was the time he asked me if I could use a twenty. He did the same for kids in the 'hood with rings in their noses and lips who were far from home. I was part of a group of poets who met with Huff regularly for several years to write and discuss our poems. If you listen to work by any of us today, whether you think the poems good or bad, you won't hear Huff's voice! To me this shows not only generosity, but the legacy of a true teacher. He wanted us to write our poems, not his.

W. Joe Hoppe: Art got Huff's everything. He lived a fairly pared-down existence outside of his writings and drawings and paintings. Huff had an incredible inner life, and he was able to transfer much of that into his art. Huff balanced his poems between his seeking side -- he was always searching for who he really, really truly, was -- and his compassionate, observational side, which caused him to identify and feel for and with every other sentient being on the planet. So here was a guy who knew what he was after, seemed to be pretty sure he'd never find it, and kept on writing.

Rob Lewis: What looms largest in my thinking is his presence among Austin's poets, artists, and dreamers of all kinds as an elder. By that I mean much more than simply an unconventional senior citizen who wrote poetry and painted and bearded the dominant paradigm. Huff was an elder such as a tribe might have, or a church, or a younger sibling. He was every bit as real, direct, and fundamental as the aneurysm that killed him. It will take many, many of us to fill his shoes.

Posted over on The Austin Chronicle