Studios Books

Charles Potts is an experienced poet with more several published works to his credit. Nature Lovers is the latest of his collections and continues to document him as having a unique style and gift for language, images, and speaking to the mind and heart of his reader. The Code Of The Olde West: Get a load of Charlie Coyote,/Hauled before the magistrate by the grammar police/For hunting verbs without a license.//The judge demands to know:/How did you learn the vernacular?/There are correct ways to say the same thing,//Cheap talk from fatigued Sierra Clubbers/Cannot change my mind, your honor./I'm outside the purview of Standard American Englishizers.//Like the taxidermist he will be/If he ever catches anything Stoic,/Sniff this poem and make it snappy naturally./Fill it with linguistic drift.

I met Charles Potts in 1970. I was living in Minneapolis and was starting a writing workshop, so I took the unusual tack of tacking postcard notices around in the West Bank neighborhood. No one locally ever contacted me about the postcards. But a visitor to Minneapolis, in the visage of a bona fide bearded beat poet from the west, who was passing through Minnesota in his microbus on a poetry tour of America, found himself, as poets do, standing and copying a stranger's phone number from a telephone pole. Charles Potts called and asked to visit me. We huddled as equals, drank iced tea, sized up one another's poetics, and agreed to stay in touch.

We have been friends ever since. Good friends. I sometimes feel Charlie knows what is in my heart better, and respects it more, than I myself do.

Charles was vastly more advanced than I was. He, even in his twenties, knew who he was, knew how the world worked, and knew what he wanted to do. I'm still working on all three. Talking to him, and corresponding later, I felt I was communing directly with the wild prophetic side of American poetry.

Most poetry I read in the early 70s was elliptical as all get-out, dreamy, posey, and mainly about the self's deep interest in itself. Charlie was doing something nearly the opposite. You could feel the gravel under his poems -- they were roughcut, fearless, and unfailingly straight about what they wanted to say. You didn't wonder what psychic level Charlie was writing from (8? 13? lingerie and notions?) any more than you'd wonder what level a gun pointed at your darkest suspicions and prejudices was on. Even when his poems were funny they were dead-on serious, like Lenny Bruce on a good night. I had to be reminded he was a youngest, not an oldest child, because of that quality of gravitas.

Anyway, on to the poems in Nature Lovers. Charlie wrote these poems in 1989, under the influence of his study in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and readings in the microstructure of cognition. The title is a tip-off to Charlie's ragged irony -- because it is impossible for humans to truly love nature, because we are helplessly separated from it by language and consciousness -- the makings of poetry itself. "I go way back with writers who identify themselves with nature," he writes in an afterword. "Wordsworth, for the mystifying and mystical unity to be fond there; Menzu (Mencius) for his insistence that the entire state has to operate in obeisance to natural law; and Lucretius, who said poets should never lose the power to irritate."

Each poem is a meditation, or an editorial cartoon, about some aspect of nature. Listen to the fussy cadence and the caustic syllogistics, and tell me you don't hear the unmistakable ring of Menzu in the following:

Natural Causes

"He died of natural causes."

How many times have you relaxed while reading

That sanguine phrase and paused to wonder:

What causes would not be natural?

Car wrecks, overdoses, the fall of Flight DC 10?

Mechanical, pharmaceutical, aeronautical?

If everything is by definition natural,

What's left to experiment on?

Pig out on Haagen Dazs ice cream diet?

Fall down my one-time publisher's nomenclature,

The Empty Elevator Shaft?

Will you pass on a drug bust or a cardiac arrest?

You ask too many questions.

See death of a naturalist,
Watch Hermes put Argus to sleep

With an interminable story.

Bored him to death, naturally.

Maybe that is not a "great" poem, but it is great discourse, and poor, loathed poetry desperately needs this sense of engagement, this sense of mental acuity.

But Charlie Potts's poetry is. His oeuvre is immense and intelligent and so keen. Besides some twenty books of poems, he has written harrowing memoirs about going crazy in the 60s, plus a terrific polemic about U.S. politics, How the South Finally Won the Civil War. Plus, he is a noted publisher and editor. His own presses: Litmus, Inc. in the 60s and 70s, and Tsunami, publisher of the great multilingual magazine published on rag paper, The Temple¸ and Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, one of the most remarkable anthologies of recent decades.

This little book is one of his most striking collections. In it he achieves what every political poet should ache to do, yet so few try -- graft the confusion of the heart to the evidence of our senses. This is no-nonsense poetry from a visionary who long ago stripped the gears off common sense. His best work swirls the spirits of Ginsberg and Ken Kesey and Phil Ochs at their best, and more anciently, the poets Walt Whitman and William Blake, the pamphleteer Tom Paine, and the mountain man Jim Bridger.

Here's a poem which achieves the same kind of connection, with a more gripping lyricism:

The Stream of Consciousness

The stream of consciousness flows

Effortlessly forward like an unfed brain,
Given nothing new to think about,
Merely rotates in space, the same sounds,
Pictures, and sensations in predictable order.

Who will muddy up this stream,
Then purge and purify the cluttered tableau
Of the extraneous features preventing you
From actualizing your ideal self,
The way you always wanted to look and sound?

The quicksand of the collective unconsciousness
Will tempt you many times
With its lurid renditions of quackery images
Stories in the millennia of Christian denial,
Hallucinated forward at the speed of pain.

Down a lazy river to the polluted sea
The flotsam jettisons thoughtlessly along,
Contributory to a natural disaster.
Throw yourself onto the banks to stimulate
Your freeflowing sense of contrary motion.

Let it work on you. Here is a poem about nothing less than the significance and substance of thought -- everything that means meaning to us. He simultaneously reveres the gift and potential of consciousness, while despairing of our ability to leverage it into truth. Like eschatological Emmett Kellys, the best most of us manage is to sweep the spotlight of our own desire into the ashcan as we depart. The language is unflinchingly ambitious, but never pompous or "poetic." In fact, it's fun -- "flotsam jettisons," indeed. Here's a living, thinking head, giving you its best peek at the dynamic that makes us what we are. Hey, poetry isn't supposed to be important.

We think we love nature, says Charles Potts, but nature doesn't love us back. In fact, you'd be smart to keep a close eye on it, because one of these days, nature's going to get you.

I am a former student of Dr. Kirby's and I am now an Elementary School teacher. I had her for writing at Kennesaw State University where she incorporated the methods described in this book in her class. I was very scared and intimidated by writing when the course started, but by the end of the semester, I LOVED memoir and writing in general. The techniques she uses are very engaging, fun, and meaningful. I especially liked the "Snapshot" pieces of writing which allowed me to really explore my creativity and writing skills. Everyone likes to talk about themselves and memoir allows you to do this. This is an excellent book which has the potential of making mediocre writers good and good writers great!

When a friend recommended this book, I had no idea that the studio workshop approach would overshadow the memoir in its pedagogical attractiveness. The two authors detail how they studied visual artists in their studios and how they came to apply that practice to the teaching of reading and writing memoir. The studio approach that they present in this book is far richer than the usual writing workshop. Because of their years of experience and their extensive field testing of this model, the authors anticipate every pitfall. The book includes a complete package of reading and writing memoir activities, enough rubrics and worksheets to get started, an excellent booklist that spans the lower grades through college level and suggestions on how to develop one's own memoir booklist. In the school where I consult I plan to use this book with high school freshmen in English class and then to recommend that English and some content area teachers return to this model in a shorter form when the same students are juniors and seniors, so that they can benefit even more from the reflective elements of the model. Because of the nature of contemporary memoir, I can see the model as presented in this book as being effective at age levels from primary through higher education, and as being relevant to any area of the US.

The moment I recieved 'The Older Brother Returns' I had a very hard time putting it down. I laughed. I cried. It is very thought provoking. I want to send a copy to every one I know. This is the type book you just don't let out of sight. It is extremely inspiring, as I have said. I absolutely reccommend this to anyone down on themselves, down on life, down on the upcoming year, with all the hoopla you hear coming from the media. This book will turn your life around. It did mine.

What a timely gift for all who seek to express God's loving heart in our day! Author Neal Lozano has served as an instrument of the Great Physician in providing a healthy dose of medicine for the soul and spirit. It is a very fitting book to read as we prepare for the new millennium. As Pope John Paul II urged recently, "Let no one behave like the elder brother in the Gospel parable who refuses to enter the house to celebrate (cf. Lk. 15:25-30). May the joy of forgiveness be stronger and greater than any resentment." THE OLDER BROTHER RETURNS is an excellent means to apply that timely message -- and the classic story about the prodigal son and the older brother (in all of us!).

Sharon MacCabe and Matthew Payton fight an incendiary attraction as they work to stop a serial arsonist in Charleston, WV. I enjoyed watching their love and trust grow, and the arson suspense story was different and compelling. Sharon is a heroine you can root for, and Matthew is a yummy hero. I bought this book after thoroughly enjoying Sargeant's first romantic suspense, You Belong To Me. Her books have a place on my keeper shelf!

This is the first book I've read by this author and it is a page turner. She is very detailed in her writing. She makes you feel like you are on the scene, and she makes the characters come alive.

The book starts out slow, but all the details will help tremendously throughout the book. A news reporter and fire investigator try to work together (despite the fire burning between the two of them) to solve the mystery behind a string of arsons; while outside forces attempt to prevent the mystery from being solved. This story is full of deception, trust, murder, mystery, and surprises.

I bought this book in the hopes that it would give me a few more items, spells and feats for my players to enjoy, and instead found a book capable of adding great flavour and verve to any campaign.

The rewrite of the bard is the highlight of this book for me. From a new and unique method of spellcasting, to a new set of skills and special abilities, the bard in this book goes from being a sort of utility spellcaster to being a completely new and unique class, a thing apart. The idea of casting spells as songs is not a new one, but the way that it's done here is nothing short of brilliant, encouraging bards to use their spells while not sacrificing any of the other abilities of the class.

The feats focus mainly on bardic activity, as do the prestige classes, making the addition of the soul magic section seem, at first, like a last-minute add-on. It's not. Soul magic is, as another reviewer's said, the use of intelligent spells, and saying more than that would be spoiling things. They really will add depth to my games in the future.

As if that weren't enough good stuff (for less than half the price of a standard hard-bound WoTC title), there are also a smattering of new and useful spells, perfect for making surprise scrolls and adding detail to a campaign.

I recommend this book to anyone looking to spice up the bard class, and anyone interested in some new and unusual spells and abilities.

One thing I like about the 3E core rulebooks is it seems like WotC play tested the hell out of them. Nearly everything is fairly well balanced. Many aspects have been simplified from the 2nd addition in a good way (though sometimes too much.) Overall, I really like 3E and consider it worth buying.

Enter supplemental materials like the Book of Eldritch Might II, by Monte Cook. Let's take a look:

VALUE: Under 15 bucks for the printed version, or 5 bucks for the PDF file (available from his website). After shelling out at least 20 for each of the class books, I find this very refreshing.

DESIGN: The art in the printed version is some of the finest yet in a Malhavok product. Monte continues to enlist better and better artists for each product. (I went with the PDF and had Kinko's print it out and spiral bind it.)

CONTENT: This is where all of Monte's D&D 3E material shines. The man is brilliant when it comes to fantasy game design. Like BoEM I, The BoEM II contains new feats, spells (primary for Wizard's and Sorcs), new prestige classes, and new magic items. However, these aren't just more of the same things we've seen. Each has a unique flavor and purpose. However, first lets go over what's totally new: Variant versions of the bard and sorcerer.

BARD: Since 3rd Edition came out, I've seen a million variant rangers, and half a million variant bards. Monte comes through in spades with his variant bard. No longer the sub-par sorcerer rogue fighter, the new bard uses spellsongs to power his unique magical talents. Big thumbs up.

SORCERER: Unlike Monte's variant ranger & bard, his sorcerer is not an attempt to fix a class that was considered 'broken' by so many. Indeed, many consider the sorcerer to kick butt. But, he can get a little boring, casting the same spells all day. This sorcerer really captures the feel of innate, raw magical power. I use Monte's bard, ranger, and sorcerer in my game, and have never looked back.

SOUL MAGIC: A brand new concept for intelligent... spells. A really cool idea that I don't want to spoil. Check it out...

OTHER: Then we have pages of fantastic feats (the lace spell feats rock), spells, prestige classes, and magical items. Like BoEM I, these are all innovative, stylish, and rather deadly. In my campaign I've made the Book of Eldritch Might I & II spells a bit more rare. They are considered powerful secrets to learn of. Once you see some of these spells, you'll see what I mean by powerful...

OVERALL: 5 Stars. One of the few accessories that I've opened up in its entirety to my game. Visit Monte Cook's website for errata to this book, and all his other Malhavok Press products...

That this book is back in print is a gift to the world. It's a completely thorough and wonderful trip through various 2d and 3d geometries and patterns. The drawings can be appreciated just on an aesthetic level, or can be delved into deeply. A rare book.

This was one of the books that first showed many people the interrelationships between the Platonic and Archimedian solids. Critchlow studied under Buckminster Fuller and many of Bucky's perceptions find their way in to these pages. Not without a few small errors here and there but overall a groundbreaking book of its day and still an essential volume on the shelf of anyone who works structurally in 3-d. Highly recommended.

This is probably... no. ABSOLUTELY the best and most wonderfull book I have ever run across. Obstler does an amazing job of showing (and explaining) the true process of ceramics. This is not a technique or coffee table book although it is easily better at both categories than most books of that sort. This IS a book more about the materials of ceramics than the finished product. Mimi lovingly portrays the full cycle of the process which produces a pot. Something all true potters should know is that the actual end result, the pot, is the smallest and most insignificant part of ceramics. In this book, the reader is introduced to the whole life of the materials which we use. In a mish mash of history, formula, chemistry and geology, Mimi Obstler creates a unique and awe-inspiring story not just of the pot or potter, but of the earth from which both are born.
This book is beautifully crafted, and you can tell, that a lot of love, work and knowledge have gone into it's creation. This is a must have for anyone who truly loves pottery OR geology. I have never seen a book this amazing before. I highly recomend it. This book is worth every cent and so much more. I can honestly say that I am stunned. Thank you Mimi Obstler, this is a treasure.

"Out of the Earth Into the Fire" is a necessary book for any potter , and is especially useful for any potter doing their own glazes.It details in it's four chapters, although very long and comprehensive chapters, all of the glaze and clay making ingredients that you will need. The first chapter deals with the glaze cores. It talks of both the historical and the emperical aspects of all the necessary substances in use. A substance that I can't wait to get my hands on is Rotton Stone. I'll let you read the book to find out why. The second chapter is about clays and clay bodies.Although most of us buy prepared clay this gives us reason to make our own. The next chapter concerns auxillary melters.We find here about glaze surfaces; how to best utilize a substance to make a glossy, a matt, or an opaque surface. Finally the last chapter reveals all we want to know about silica and alumina. The appendices are full of useful material. There are even some good pictures in this book. An unexpected surprise.

Chip Rock's Outtakes displays excellent photographs of KISS in their heydays. By seeing those glorious photos... you will feel like you were there, watching historical moments of KISStory being made. Many of die-hard KISS fans might already have the KISSYEARS photobook by Barry Levine that focus on the Destroyer/RARO and Elder era. Well..., Chip Rock's Outtakes gives you outstanding KISS photos from different era. This book will compliment the fine moments of KISSTory where other books left off. This a MUST for all KISS fans.

Chip Rock Dayton's book "Outtakes" captures the raw energy, talent, and determination of a "kid from Long Island" who made it to the big time of rock and roll photography. How? By chronicling the ultimate rock and roll spectacular known as KISS! Chip's amazing photos, many never before published (hence the title) are just a part of this tome. Chip's stories about following his favorite rock and roll band through the mid to late seventies is modern day folklore for any aspiring artist. There are the stories, and of course pictures, of the self-financed road trips to concerts in the early days(including how the author sold his photos outside of venues to pay for gas. Forget the 4 star hotels the "rock stars" stayed at; he slept in his car!). The author describes in great detail how he befriended one of the biggest rock and roll bands in the world, and how that relationship continues to this day. This book was in the works for a long time and ceratainly worth the wait. As a professional photojournalist, concert photographer, and yes a KISS fan, I highly recommend this book for anyone who dares to visit the inside world of Rock and Roll stardom.

If ever you want to be inspired, transformed, bowled over or "wowwed" by the possibilities of an old house... Read the Pomada/Larsen series. The pictures are breathtakenly beautiful and the text is quite informative. Lots of 'pearls of wisdom' there. Before you buy that victorian, read this book for some informative information. After you buy--keep reading (like a litany) to keep the vision alive amidst the rubble and asbestos. You won't be sorry ---you will be renewed. These books were like falling in love, or the collector's itch---The fever is maddening but the end result is Oh so sweet. Get them all!! (5 titles still available)

11 years after the publication of "Painted Ladies," Elizabeth Pomada returned to San Francisco to gaze anew upon its Victorians, and found a new concern for authenticity, subtlety, and sophistication in what she now calls the "Colorist Movement." The examples she shows here, while still splendidly detailed and richly pigmented, are for the most part less gaudy than those in the first book, reflecting the emergence of yuppies onto the preservationist stage earlier occupied by hippies and radicals. Almost the best part of the book, however, is the many interiors she has included, often by houseowners with a keen interest in authentic restoration. Architecture and interior-decorating buffs alike will want to own this volume.

I've taken this book with me twice to Paris, in spite of its weight (three-and-a-half pounds) and the fact that it's not really a guidebook. It is an elegant, erudite tour of the City of Light, through its streets and through its history.

I first read "Paris" in a small garret under the eaves of a grand Parisian hotel. It had been one of the hottest days on record and my room had no air-conditioning. Nor does Paris shut down for the night. However, I had an imposing view of a street, lined with facades of a "huge blank pompous featureless sameness" that was deplored by Henry James. And I had this book, which turned that airless Parisian night into magic. Its author has a knack for spotting the most telling detail--from the "heavy, gun-metaled print of a mid-nineteenth-century thumb" where he starts his tour in the Louvre, to the very borders of Ile de France where he ultimately bids his readers farewell under the "immensities of the upper air" that were a painter's dream. "Light, then, first: and air."

In many aspects of their lives, John Russell finds Parisians to be "a secretive, devious, ungiving people." Buildings are there to hide things, not expose them to every passing tourist. However, this book puts all of the charming (and not so charming) details of interior life on view. There are the velvet-lined elevators of the original Galeries Lafayette, whose builder's passion "was to conquer the female race"--in the shopping sense of 'conquer.' There are Anglophile pubs, and expensive 'bars-à-filles,' where "the lights glow rose-to-amber, the windows are curtained with carpet, ...a sad bargain can be driven at any hour of the day, and the atmosphere is inexpugnably 'triste'."

One of my favorite descriptions is of Balzac's house on the street that now bears his name. Like so many other Parisians, the nineteenth-century author succumbed to the contagion of High Victorian style. Hardly a surface in the house was left unsculpted or unencrusted with bronze, tortoiseshell, and buttercup damask. The bathroom was built of yellow stone and covered with bas-reliefs in stucco. Once shut inside Balzac's library, a stranger might never find her way out again, because even the door was lined with bookshelves.

The author is equally at home in every Parisian milieu, from palace to 'bar-à-fille.' As Rosamond Bernier says in her introduction to this book, "No one else could combine the feel and the look, the heart and the mind, the stones and the trees, the past and the present, the wits, the eccentrics, and the geniuses of my favorite city with such easy grace."

"Paris" is adorned with 310 illustrations (many of them charming old photographs), including 85 colored plates, all personally chosen by John Russell.

If a trip to Paris is even the merest glimmer on your event horizon, read this book. You can lug it to Paris like I did, or snuggle up to it in the comfort of your own room. And dream.

I bought this book many years ago, before my first visit to Paris. It was both more than I anticipated and less than I expected. By this I mean that it was a very impractical book to use, by itself, as a guide to Paris, but was a wonderful book to use to learn about the Paris of the Parisians and the Parisians, themselves. Strange, you may say, but by reading PARIS, one comes to the realization that the Parisian has a relationship with his city that is unlike any other.

As one example of this, Russell talks of the fact that Parisians are not particularly impressed by their famous authors, artists, statesmen, etc. To wit: When a great man dies, Parisians give themselves over to grief that seems almost inconsolable, but on the way home from the miles long funeral procession, "they remind themselves that for every great Parisian who lies in a vault there is another great Parisian ....."

Russell says that Paris is a city of impulse, a city in which to act on impulse is one of the secrets of happiness. This, to me, is why the typical three day whirlwind tour of Paris is so unsatisfactory. My first visit to Paris was on just such a tour (my last one, by the way) and I left feeling that I'd really missed something. Following Russell's excellent advice, I came back a few years later and spent a month taking life on a day by day basis. This visit was much more fulfilling and I have PARIS to thank for helping me understand the importance of taking time out from sightseeing to absorb a little of the ambience that is the true Paris.

This book is much more than an occasional bit of advice to the would be tourist. It is a history. It is a discussion of the art and architecture of Paris. It is a discussion of key areas within the city and of the Ile de France surrounding the city. It is also a discussion of the Parisian of today and yesterday and what makes him unique. To boot, it contains countless photographs and art reproductions going back hundreds of years. There is a wonderful discussion of the old railroad station hotels with detailed descriptions of several of them. I have a feeling that "progress" has wiped out most of them.

No book on Paris would be complete without a discussion of the Metro. PARIS gives the history of this transportation backbone of Paris from its beginnings to the present. It's nice to know that you're never more than about 5 minutes from a Metro station and never more than about 45 minutes, by Metro, from anywhere in Paris. My wife and I purchased Carte Orange's (Orange Cards - 30 day Metro Passes) for about $42.00 American each, and had our month's transportation needs provided for. The Metro and good walking shoes, that's all one needs in Paris.

I can't imagine anyone reading this book and not wanting to visit Paris. I know that if I hadn't been there I'd want to go after reading it. As it is, rereading sections of this book, in preparation for this review, has made me want to do just that. Je suis pret.