About West End PressPeoples Culture &
|
The Portable PottsCharles PottsFor more than forty years, Charles Potts has remained true to his origins as a relentless and radical visionary. This volume, consisting 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 Walla Walla, Washington. Potts takes on the issues of his time, according to poet and critic Janice Fate Fiering, “in a mode of address unlike any other.” “It is deeply moving, at times nearly overwhelming, to read the lifetime work of such an exceptional man and his knowledge, his aesthetic: that love carried on the vehicle of the poem is a miracle.”—Sharon Doubiago
“Prior to my curing myself of paranoid schizophrenia, I entertained the simple delusion that it would only take a little self-sacrifice and denial for human life to survive on earth, a perfectly crazy idea. Little did I realize at the time that I was not normal and the survivalist organizing principle of that illness prevented me from noticing that the vast majority of people is organized on the pleasure principle, not the survival principle. I pass for normal now and our well-intended and self-serving delusions regarding the natural world won’t make them come true.” 4½ x 7 inches • 384 pages • ISBN 0-9753486-3-9 • $19.95 |
Charles Potts
Born in Idaho Falls in 1943, Charles Potts emerged as a visionary counter-culture poet in Berkeley until he was hospitalized for schizophrenia 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 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).  |