Savage Sunsets
In his twelfth poetry collection, Adrian Louis slays Indian Country’s centuries-old demons and his own grief upon losing his wife to Alzheimers. Louis reveals a writer at his peak and a poet unafraid to take chances. There is no room for error or misinterpretation in diction that is as clear-cut as a logged forest. In “Archaeology,” he writes about the Anglo invasion of Indian Country and the loss of Native traditions, language, and history.
In “Savage Sunsets,” Louis writes candidly about his wife’s battle with Alzheimers and how the disease steals away their waning days together. As the sun sets on his wife’s life and on Indian Country, Louis remains stalwart, a bold emissary who has lived to tell.
View Adrian’s book trailer for Savage Sunsets here.
I’ve been reading the distinctive poetry of Adrian Louis for more years than either of us cares to remember. In Savage Sunsets there is always an emotional complexity and a passion that I admire. By turns, it is raw, scathing, hilarious, irreverent, reverent, mournful, joyful and tuneful.” -Sam Hamill
“There is no one quite like Adrian Louis writing in America today. He is full of grief, for his wife, recently passed away after a twelve year battle for her life, for his people, after two-hundred years of struggle against an oppressor, for life in general, which seems a losing battle. But none of these complaints are what make his poems so great. It is the language brought forth in all its power to express the delicate balance between hope and despair, resignation and the will to fight back that brings the collection to its apex and makes me shudder with delight. These poems will teach us something about life, how fragile and precious it is, how worth fighting for whether you win or lose.”-James Tate
“Wild, sometimes foolish, sometimes poignant, often cartoony and sporadically brilliant.”-New York Times Book Review
“Adrian C. Louis may be the best vernacular poet in America. He uses harsh, slangy, obsene language with an un-self conscious mastery and the authenticity of coming from harsh and obscene circumstances.”-Booklist
Adrian Louis’s poetry is the half-bred howl and fully electric song of Indian country. I memorize and recite his poems in the same way that white college professors memorize and recite Yeats and Keats.”-Sherman Alexie
“Pure American poetry at its most powerful. Adrian Louis writes from the heart with a clarity and an honesty that is as terrifying as it is healing.”-Leslie Marmon Silko
“Adrian Louis is a tough, authentic American voice that will both disturb you and make you want to dance another round in the heart of Indian country.”-Joy Harjo
“Pay attention to Adrian Louis. He is truly a voice in the wilderness. Prophetic, terrifyingly intelligent, unconditionally germane. Anyone who overlooks him does so in peril.”-Hayden Carruth
“Adrian Louis’s hard-bitten, homegrown (and marvelously learned) tongue speaks hard-won truths of North America. His steady, fine-tuned stanzas, cutting and compassionate, tough and funny, shine a hard light on everything—including himself.”-Gary Snyder
“There is no border in his poems between the politics of the heart and the politics of the land. The music that fills his body of stories is direct and ancient. Still, it sounds like no one else’s.”-Andrei Codrescu
