More of this Feature • Part I, Close Encounter of the Small Press Kind • Part II, The Temple and Its Keeper • Part III, So Who Is This Guy Again? • Part V, The Temple School of Poetry • 4 Poems by Charles Potts

Related Articles • Poetry in a Time of Fire (small press in Australia), by Chris Mansell • Hearts and Hands, an interview with Luis Rodriguez • Herman Berlandt’s International Poetry Museum, by Marj Hahne • 95 Theses: Mission of the Machines (Marc Awodey’s poetry vending machines)

Elsewhere on the Web • The Temple Bookstore • The Temple School of Poetry

“THE 62nd BEST LITTLE TOWN IN AMERICA FOR ART”
Named for an extinct Indian tribe, in the native tongue Walla Walla means “many waters” or “small rapid streams.” Lewis and Clark passed through. Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman stayed and lent their last name to local landmarks galore. Ultimately, Marcus was murdered by area Native Americans, probably for good reason.

Home to 30,000 souls, according to the Chamber of Commerce Walla Walla is “steeped in history and blessed with beauty.” I wholeheartedly agree, having found the “historic downtown” friendly, walkable and unexpectedly of the moment, perhaps due to the three local colleges which keep the town young. Affluent lifestyle trappings are in evidence -- cafes, wine bars, nouveau cuisine -- and area vineyards are out to steal some of Napa wine country thunder.

During my weeklong stay in early September of 2002, weather ran from warm to sun-baked but pleasant. The Potts manse, a rambling New England-style Victorian over a hundred years old, rests on a wide leafy avenue minutes by foot from downtown. Charles, his wife Ann, daughter Natalie and kinetic dachshund Penny extended unfailing hospitality. Their hammock is unsurpassable. Thirteen-year-old Natalie kicked off sections of my “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Burrito” at the bookstore reading, flipping outsize numbered cards like a seasoned pro.

At 950 feet above sea level, with an annual rainfall of less than twenty inches and the median price of housing $96,000, Walla Walla is by no means a place you would have to be sentenced to live -- though it does boast a bad-ass state penitentiary (where Potts taught for several years) once written up in Life magazine for corruption of legendary proportions.

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