Herbert Edwin Huncke (/ˈhʌŋki/ HUNK-ee;[1] January 9, 1915 – August 8, 1996) was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America.

[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Chicago, Herbert Huncke was a street hustler, high school dropout, and drug user.

He left Chicago as a teenager after his parents divorced and began living as a hobo, jumping trains throughout the United States and bonding with other vagrants through shared destitution and common experience.

At this point, Huncke's regular haunts were 42nd Street and Times Square, where he associated with a variety of people, including prostitutes (male and female) and sailors.

During World War II, Huncke shipped out to sea as a United States Merchant Marine to ports in South America, Africa, and Europe.

It was here he renewed his acquaintance with the young Abe Green, a fellow train jumper and much later on in the early beatnik scene, a regular reciter of his own enigmatic brand of spontaneous poetry.

Huncke valued loyalty and it is thought that Abe Green was of "inestimable assistance" to Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac when it came to the concealment of the weapon used to kill David Kammerer some years later.

In the music world, Huncke visited all the jazz clubs and associated with Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon (with whom he was once busted on 42nd Street for breaking into a parked car).

In the late 1940's, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Melody and Vickie Russell were apprehended after flipping a car in Queens, New York, trying to run-over a NYPD motorcycle cop.

When Herbert Huncke was released from prison on parole Little Jack's family set him up with a job in an ornamental glass company in Manhattan near 23rd Street.

The transcript of these recordings were edited by Roger Goodman, head of the English Department at Stuvesant High School and Paul Metcalf (grandson of Herman Melville).

Jack Kerouac described Huncke in his "Now it's Jazz" reading from Desolation Angels, chapter 77: Huck, whom you'll see on Times Square, somnolent and alert, sad, sweet, dark, holy.

Tortured by sidewalks, starved for sex and companionship, open to anything, ready to introduce a new world with a shrug.John Clellon Holmes described Albert Ancke, his representation of Huncke in Go in Chapter 14 of part 2: A sallow, wrinkled little hustler, hatless and occupying a crumpled sport shirt as though crouched in it to hide his withered body.Admired by David Wojnarowicz in his personal diaries, In the Shadow of the American Dream, where their meetings/dates are documented.