The Portable Potts

by Potts, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780975348635
• ISBN10: 0975348639
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

For more than forty years, Charles Potts has remained true to his origins as a relentless and radical visionary. This selection of poetry, fiction, and memoir represents work he has published in hundreds of magazines and over twenty books. Edgy, irreverent, and innovative, lyrical and analytical at the same time, he is one of the age's true literary discoveries. His creative geography ranges from the Bay Area to Mexico, Idaho to Salt Lake City, China to Japan, and now rests in Walla Walla, Washington, where his work continues to evolve. A westerner who faces Mexico and the Pacific Rim more readily than Europe or the eastern United States, Potts takes on the issues of his time, according to poet and critic Janice Faye Fiering, "in a mode of address unlike any other." Born in Idaho Falls in 1943, Potts emerged as a counterculture poet in Berkeley until he was hospitalized for psychosis in 1968. He collected and published many of his early writings, re-establishing himself as a poet and essayist, in the 1970s in Salt Lake City. After moving to Walla Walla, he worked in real estate to ensure his family's financial security. His renewed contact with the Idaho West of his youth resulted in important books of poetry in the 1990s, and his work developed further following his study of Japanese and Mandarin Chinese in that decade. His books include Little Lord Shiva(1968); Valga Krusa(1977); Rocky Mountain Man(1978); How the South Finally Won the Civil War(1995); Lost River Mountain(1999); Across the North Pacific(2002); and Kiot(2005).

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 10
Sixties: The Berkeley Poems	p. 15
I Dream of Oaxaca	p. 18
Para Olga	p. 21
The Riot Act	p. 26
Fu Hexagram 24	p. 28
Uproar and Feedback	p. 32
Second Coming of Joseph Smith	p. 52
Wild Dog Distinguished Service Cross	p. 55
The Total Eclipse of Ezra Pound	p. 58
Valga Krusa	p. 63
The Yellow Christ: The Decadent Cages	p. 68
Rainbow Rebozo	p. 80
Laffing Water Drops Out	p. 87
The Pancake Church	p. 98
Shit Crackers: from Solarium	p. 102
Seventies: Salt Lake Reconciliation	p. 117
The Streets of Paul Regret	p. 120
A Valediction: Forbidding Mormon	p. 122
The Golden Calf	p. 123
March Wardrobe	p. 129
Why I Live in Salt Lake City	p. 130
Too Late	p. 132
The Captain's Wheel	p. 134
La Maudite Riviere Enragee	p. 138
The Flying Butterfinger Brothers Have Seen the Last of Me	p. 140
Knee Deep in Bleeding Hearts	p. 142
The Vicious Gothic Circle	p. 144
The Language Exam	p. 146
Madness	p. 148
The Columbia River Watch Position Paper	p. 150
Lina Wertmuller Meets the Son of Coyote	p. 152
Charlie Kiot	p. 154
Eighties: Time Out in Walla Walla	p. 155
A Debt I Owe to the Tropics	p. 158
Sampson Walks Out	p. 159
A Rite to the Body	p. 160
Autumn in Alta	p. 161
The Dictatorship of the Environment	p. 162
Feast of the Dead	p. 163
A Marijuana Poem	p. 166
The Vishnu Shift	p. 170
For Edward	p. 171
Poetry and Real Estate	p. 173
The Bible, Whiskey, and My Gun	p. 174
A Concert in the Sun	p. 175
Mussolini Jones	p. 176
Thus Spake Velikovsky	p. 177
Leon Trotsky's Dues Are Refused by the Cascade Chapter of the Washington Sierra Club	p. 178
Overamping in Walla Walla	p. 179
I Play a Lot of Tennis	p. 180
The State of Nature	p. 181
Natural Language	p. 182
Natural Responsibilities	p. 183
Donner Beach Party	p. 184
The Henry David Thoreau Volunteer Army	p. 185
Slow Down, Columbia Slow Down	p. 186
Modus Operandum	p. 187
How the South Finally Won the Civil War: And Controls the Political Future of the United States	p. 191
Intro: Southern Paranoid Fascism	p. 192
Holy War: How War Became the State Religion	p. 198
First Texan: Remember the Alamo!	p. 212
The Gunbelt: DOD Demographics	p. 226
Nineties: Idaho Boundaries	p. 243
The Crooked Boundaries of Idaho	p. 246
Starlight on the Trail	p. 247
The Homestead Act	p. 248
Poetry on Horseback	p. 250
Raspberry	p. 251
Steps My Mother with Some Reluctance Took	p. 254
Going Blind	p. 255
The Joyful Lightness of Natalie	p. 256
Hide	p. 258
Back to Idaho	p. 259
Stinging Nettles	p. 261
Eagle Out	p. 262
The Pass at Doublespring	p. 263
Pahsimeroi Eki	p. 266
The Auction Block	p. 268
Mom and Dad	p. 270
Coming to Terms	p. 271
The Old Pioneer Cemetery	p. 274
Raspberry Redux	p. 277
2000s: Across the North Pacific and other poems	p. 279
Angio Gram	p. 282
Binary	p. 286
Easter Surprise	p. 289
Misol-Ha-The Mayan Waterfall	p. 290
Geezers in Space	p. 291
The Hot Dog Train	p. 292
Across the North Pacific
The Prolog	p. 295
When Metaphors Collide	p. 298
Homage to DeVoto	p. 300
How Long Is a Dynasty and When Do We Get Ours?	p. 302
Holy War	p. 304
The Tin Island Speculation	p. 306
(K) Celtic Triad	p. 307
Opportunities in Disintegration	p. 308
Free Lance Pheidippides on the Disinclined Plains of Marathon	p. 310
Substantial and Desire	p. 311
Facing the Sea	p. 313
Perpendicular to the Noodle	p. 315
Searching for Mitsuhiro	p. 316
If Would	p. 318
The Xiang Jiang River Bridge	p. 322
Beijing with Cottonwoods and Roses	p. 323
I Wanted to End with a Crescendo	p. 326
Mama Losen and Patri Spekt	p. 327
Drinking	p. 328
Afternoon with Dog	p. 331
The Hearth	p. 332
Wild Horse	p. 334
The Opium Must Go Thru	p. 337
Pierre, the Dehydrated Frenchman	p. 340
The Crooked and the Wide	p. 343
An Affront to the White Pansy Bed	p. 346
The Synod of Borah	p. 347
Disney Presents: The Opium Must Go Thru	p. 351
Mirador de Mille Cumbres or Murder and Les Beaux Arts	p. 353
Cold Turkey	p. 356
Universal International Indian Love Cry	p. 357
Opus Won	p. 359
The Flute and Recorder and Woodwind Missing Link	p. 360
Appendix	p. 363
Chronology	p. 364
Acknowledgments	p. 368
Books	p. 373
Berkeley in 1968, Literary Influences, Later Development	p. 374
David Bromige on Valga Krusa	p. 378
One Liners on Valga Krusa	p. 380
Works Cited for How the South Finally Won the Civil War	p. 381
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