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 IV, “The 62nd Best Little Town In America For Art” • 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 TEMPLE SCHOOL OF POETRY
Last August several friends contacted me about my upcoming reading and stint as a “visiting poet” at The Temple School of Poetry. (In a burst of activity after putting The Temple down, Potts took on my collection Twilight of the Male Ego, and decided to open a school and bookstore. In a subsequent beyond-the-grave special issue of The Temple, he had announced all of this and printed a detailed prospectus for the school.) I verified the rumor. Yes, I would be giving the inaugural reading at The Temple Bookstore, and would be “in residence” for a week in the northern hinterlands -- doing what in any official capacity I did not know.

It so happens The Temple is an actual place (cf., Lew Welch’s poem “Wobbly Rock”), a former Masonic Lodge. Solidly built of red brick, sizeable, two-storied, and looking more fortified than most forts, it sits squarely on the corner of Colville and Alder streets just off Main Street in downtown Walla Walla. In the fall of 2002, its plate glass-windowed, street-front tenants consisted of a Xerox repair studio, a glass etcher, a barbershop, a beauty parlor, the Democratic County Headquarters, and a no-alcohol all-ages hip-hop nightclub extending into the basement for live music and dancing. On the mezzanine, an insurance business and an accountant. Upstairs is Charles Potts’s combination office/trophy room and a dance studio. Between them is a 4500 square foot loft apartment/communal space, including a huge banquet room and a death-scene balcony. These quarters, formerly rented out as a party pad to local college students, comprise the once and future Temple School of Poetry.

The school is getting off to a slow start, as student Andy Glass defected to a staff position and Paul Skyrm of Ohio had to postpone his plans due to family problems. Potts is currently conducting the school electronically via email with several prospective students. Certainly, establishing a Northwest successor to Black Mountain will require instructors whose names carry more luster than mine. A Sharon Doubiago residence is under discussion, and others are in the works. Potts, whose “always merry and bright” attitude recalls Henry Miller’s post-escape-from-New-York joie de vivre, remains unfazed and invokes Philip Whalen’s description of Plato’s Academy as “A Walking Grove of Trees.” He relies on the principle of attraction.

...Which has merit. Jeff Jensen drove over 250 miles from Portland with his wife Carole and infant son Emryk to meet Charles and hear me read at the bookstore opening. Jeff and I accompanied Charles on his regular pre-sunrise Sunday ten-mile walk up Mill Creek to Rooks Park Dam, and argued poetry all the while. A group of wayward, high-octane Texans in their mid-twenties, with monikers such as Bobcat Catsull, Smokey Farris, Senataur Ferguss and Hummingirl, have motored a thousand miles more than once to live and work in Walla Walla, alternately picking Charles’ brain and making their own way, while presumably teaching him a thing or two about youth culture. They even ran an arts center/nightclub (Club Minivan) on The Temple’s premises for six months. The Temple Bookstore (also virtual, at www.thetemplebookstore.com) now functions as a cultural center, hosting local readings and exhibits and bringing in poets from out of the area.

Charles remains active on diverse fronts. He writes every day, mentors younger poets, and reads around, lately at Evergreen State College. In recent weeks he has traveled to Boise to perform, organized local Poets Against the War events and acted in Walla Walla’s staging of Lysistrata as part of the ongoing national Anti-Sociopathy Movement. His new “Radio Free Charlie” show broadcasts Monday mornings on the Whitman College station. Like his guiding spirit Ford Madox Ford, from his open-door redoubt he does The Work -- pursuing prosperity, promoting Tsunami, filling orders, and connecting several generations of writers one to the other daily, weekly, monthly, world without end.

Kurt Lipschutz

Next page > 4 poems by Charles Potts > page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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San Francisco-based poet and songwriter klipschutz (aka Kurt Lipschutz) is the author of Twilight of the Male Ego and The Good Neighbor Policy. His poems are available online at Pemmican and Gumball Poetry. He has also written a lengthy critical appreciation of Bill Knott.

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