Albert Huffstickler Honored in Austin: Huff Park (Small Press Friday)

Screen capture: goggle maps

The following notice is from long time correspondent Elzy Cogswell. Elzy is the president of the Austin Poetry Society and, like myself and many, many others, is a long-time fan of the late small press poet, Albert Huffstickler. Huff is one of the finest poets I've had the pleasure to publish in Lilliput Review over the last 24 years and so it is an equally great pleasure to share the news that, after a long, difficult campaign (I posted about this idea way back in April of 2010), the city of Austin is seeing its way to honor one of its favorite sons.


And a lyrical son he was and, in memory, continues to be.


And, since it wouldn't be about Huff if it didn't have some poems, you will find a small selection of pieces I published by him over the years following Elzy's announcement.

I've appended some screen grabs google maps, of the space, above and below.

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An Austin Poet Honored

Two years ago, the City of Austin announced it was looking for a name for a park across from City Hall. The Austin Poetry Society endorsed naming the park for the late Austin poet, Albert Huffstickler and conducted a campaign to support it. The trees in the park had been saved by a former Council Member, Margaret Hoffman, and the powerful Austin tree lobby endorsed naming the park for her, and they were successful, not without our support, for poets are also tree people. 

However, as a result of our campaign, the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association (HPNA) took up the cause, asking for such a park in Hyde Park, Huff’s neighborhood for many years.

This is the article which just appeared in the HPNA newsletter, Pecan Press, Vol. 39, no. 2 (Feb., 2013):

You may have noticed the construction of the new green space that the City is installing at the northeast corner of 38^th and Duval. This project should be completed around the beginning of February when the City will turn the maintenance over to the Hyde Park and Hancock neighborhoods. The story of this green space begins with Albert Huffstickler, known to many as the "Bard of Hyde Park." Mr. Huffstickler was a longtime resident of the neighborhood and he worked at the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas from 1973 until his retirement in 1990. For most of his life he wrote poetry, publishing hundreds of poems in journals and small presses, or publishing in his own Press of Circumstance, for which he also provided the cover art. Many neighbors recall visiting with Mr. Huffstickler at one of his neighborhood hangouts like Quackenbush Bakery on 43^rd Street or at Dolce Vita on Duval, where he would write poems, work on his charcoal drawings, or visit with neighbors. Ever since he passed away in 2002, neighbors have been thinking of ways to honor him.

A few years ago, City funding became available to construct a green space at a small strip of City property at the corner of 38^th St. and Duval. In a joint neighborhood agreement between HPNA and Hancock NA, the City agreed to construct the green space in 2011 and construction began in November 2012. Since this will officially be a "green space" and not a park, the agreement with the neighborhoods and the City are that after construction the City will hand over all maintenance to Hyde Park and Hancock. Former HPNA President Lisa Harris and former HPNA Steering Committee member John Paul Moore were instrumental in working with the City to come up with a design and in working with our Hancock neighbors on the joint agreement for ongoing maintenance that will be necessary to keep the space well watered, mowed, and trimmed. The name Huffstickler Green became an obvious choice for this new green space in honor of the man that so many neighbors know as the Hyde Park poet laureate, and whose poems have appeared countless times in the Pecan Press. We will soon be announcing a date for the opening of Huffstickler Green when we plan to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony.

  
Meanwhile, we are now figuring out how to bring the Huffstickler Green into regular use by Austin poets. 

Screen capture: goggle maps

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This past Monday, 2/25/2013, was the 11th anniversary of Huff's passing. It would seem we all still remember and we all still love you very much, Huff. I know I do.  Here is a reprise of twenty poems of Huff's I published in Lillie over the years (and posted here back in 2010):

20 Poems by Huff

 
We forget we're mostly water
till the rain falls
and every atom
in our body
starts to go home

Gullied Lives

Raw ravines
corrugated
by wind and rain
and time.

Hearts don't break.
They weather.

Something random
in the morning air.
Something not
to be named.
Something that starts
where the music ends.




Cafe Poem

That little old lady has a purpose.
She's a cartographer completing the map of her life.
It's there on her face,
as contained, as exact as the will that lies
deep in that small, sunken breast.
She looks around her, laughs.
Another line forms,
another move toward the completion she already envisions.
There's nothing more for us here.
Let's leave her to her work.

Cafe Poem

The woman in
the corner,
white on black,
white skin,
black hair,
black dress,
lights a
long, white
cigarette,
the orange flame
bright
against her cheek.

Memory

You are a dark space
in which a circle
of tiny turquoise stones
revolves endlessly.

Laundromat

This is how Hopper would have painted it:
the line of yellow dryers
catching the sunlight from the broad window.
Man with his hand reached up to the coin slot,
head turned to the side as though reflecting,
woman bent over the wide table
intent on sorting,
another standing hands at her side, looking off -
as though visiting another country;
each thing as it is,
not reaching beyond the scene for his symbols,
saying merely, "On such and such a day,
it was just as I show you."
Each person, each object, static
but the light a pilgrim.

Status Quo

My father, the stone,
rests in my heart
awaiting his completion
with a dry persistence.

I let him wait.
As all stones must,
he is learning patience.

I sought my heart
among the shadows
and found instead
a burnished leaf

I'm getting old now
I think I'll marry
the rain
and settle down

 
I think there is a way
to sculpt silence.
Perhaps that’s what
poems are:
sculptures of silence.

Like a blind dog
I turn my nose
to the wind
and truth
enters me.

We have to learn
not to replace
perception with knowledge.
Forget science.
Pierced by starlight,
I know what a star is.

Write on my tombstone:
Once so easily distracted,
now focused.

In the house of rain
there are many mansions

I wanted to understand
so much all at once
but learned:
to understand everything,
begin with one breath.

And now your shadow
falling across the page.
Where are you?
Why have you abandoned
your shadow?

We forget we're
mostly water
till the rain falls
and every atom
in our body
starts to go home.

All those
I have mourned
will die
with my dying:
my mother's hopes,
and my father's doom:
all the faces,
all the rooms.

And you too shall
pass, the autumn
tells me, shaking
its leaves
in my face.

Albert Huffstickler

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Photo by Clarita

As you will note from the work above, Huff had a great deal of affection for stone:

 

a boulder that looks
like an old woman asleep...
autumn evening

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

 

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