"Writing with the rage of a conscience that is simultaneously historical and urgent, Louis stands as one of those rare voices we must carry with us into the future." David St. John"

"Writing with the rage of a conscience that is simultaneously historical and urgent, Louis stands as one of those rare voices we must carry with us into the future." David St. John"

Adrian C. Louis's largely autobiographical verse is characterized by a bluntness born of self-irony and self-criticism. He attacks his subjects with an emotional engagement that is both tender and honest. Within the context of fallen ideals and lost spirituality among Native Americans, he composes elegies for his mentally disabled wife and describes scenes from Cowturdville, his name for the town near a reservation where he lived. Mesmerizing the reader with the rhythm of his lively lines, Louis demonstrates a stylistic strength that is both accessible and demanding. His candid portrayals of...

Adrian C. Louis's largely autobiographical verse is characterized by a bluntness born of self-irony and self-criticism. He attacks his subjects with an emotional engagement that is both tender and honest. Within the context of fallen ideals and lost spirituality among Native Americans, he composes elegies for his mentally disabled wife and describes scenes from Cowturdville, his name for the town near a reservation where he lived. Mesmerizing the reader with the rhythm of his lively lines, Louis demonstrates a stylistic strength that is both accessible and demanding. His candid portrayals of...

Finalist, 2007Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry
In a torrent of rage, love, and irony, Adrian C. Louis explodes all the myths and hypocrisy of Middle America in the twenty-first century. This is how Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsburg might have written about our post-9/11 world--where the realities of poverty on Indian reservations and the plight of Hurricane Katrina victims come in second place to the vagaries of Homeland Security. For Louis, both he and our nation face an uncertain future. Like many of us he is trapped in a surreal void of the present, where he is faced with middle age...

Finalist, 2007Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry
In a torrent of rage, love, and irony, Adrian C. Louis explodes all the myths and hypocrisy of Middle America in the twenty-first century. This is how Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsburg might have written about our post-9/11 world--where the realities of poverty on Indian reservations and the plight of Hurricane Katrina victims come in second place to the vagaries of Homeland Security. For Louis, both he and our nation face an uncertain future. Like many of us he is trapped in a surreal void of the present, where he is faced with middle age...

The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer s disease. Louis...

This collection of interrelated short stories presents an unblinking and irreverent look at the social ills of Indian reservation life. Many are based on traditional trickster tales, some of the stories are humorous and others are stark and sad.

Ancient Acid Flashes Backis the true story of one who was there --and remembers-- through the cloying marijuana haze, around the jagged edges of L.A. cross tops and crystal cranks, on wild windowpane trips, in the sweetness and sweat of tangled young bodies, in the stench of stale vomit and fresh garbage, in the raucous laughter of desperation and fear. In this remarkable collection of poems, Adrian Louis, a member of the Paiute tribe, beams us back to the Haight during the Summer of Love and beyond on an inimitable tour of the wild side of youth, freedom, and possibility."

In his twelfth poetry collection, Adrian Louis slays Indian Country's centuries-old demons and confronts his own grief upon losing his wife to Alzheimers, revealing a writer at his peak and a poet unafraid to take chances. There is no room for misinterpretation; his diction is as clear-cut as a logged forest.

In "Archaeology", Louis writes about the Anglo invasion of Indian Country and its loss of Native traditions, language, and history. In "Savage Sunsets", he writes candidly about his wife's battle with Alzheimers and how the disease steals away their waning days together. As the...