Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Sad Poets Society. Today, we’ll be discussing “Coffee House Poets” by Albert Huffstickler. I first encountered this poem in November when it was shared on the excellent poetry newsletter Poetic Outlaws. Check it out if you want more poetry delivered straight to your inbox. Now, let’s get into it.
Coffee House Poets
BY ALBERT HUFFSTICKLER
They like to write where people are. They like a little noise with their silence. They want to look up and see something. They want to be surprised. They like the flow of bodies around them. Or perhaps it's just loneliness-- yes, that too. But more than that: they like the atmosphere a little smoke laden. They like aromas-- coffee, tobacco, meat frying. They like the sudden revelation as eyes look off or blur with tears looking across a table. Where others court eternity, they're in love with the moment in all its tawdriness and glory, that instant when truth appears out of nowhere--a truth as simple and as natural as people sitting together in a room over coffee in all their vulnerability and their humanness.
I know it’s cliché, but I love writing in coffee shops. There’s something liminal about them. An enchantment comes from sitting still amid so much activity, from seeing without being seen.
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