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The ad hoc nature of The Temple School of Poetry as it develops used to resemble Philip Whalen's description of Plato's Academy as a walking grove of trees, not unlike the searching conversations Confucius had with his circle 2500 years before in China.

For example we walk a lot and when Jeff Jensen came from Portland to hear klipschutz' grand opening reading, Jensen, klip, and Potts took the ten mile hike up Mill Creek to the Rooks Park Dam and back on Sunday morning, talking poetry all the way.

Andrew Helgesen and Charles Potts climbed Mt. Borah in the summer of 2002, a 12,662 foot high poem of solid rock if there ever was one.
Travis Catsull, Smokey Farris and other tall cool Texans ran their flag up the Club Minivan pole.

After Stephen Thomas' reading, he, Walker Malling, a former student of his at University Prep in Seattle, now a student a Whitman College, and Potts, held a three hour symposium at the Coffee Perk on poetry, philosophy and the correct spiritual response to the ethical and financial collapse of American society and thought how to write a good term paper for this theme.

The open and scheduled readings are another form of ongoing conversation. We can't give you credits toward an MFA but credit accumulates where credit is due. We make the ordinary interesting and the super ordinary sublime. Can you afford to miss it?