About Adrian C. Louis
A half-breed Indian, Adrian C. Louis was born and raised in northern Nevada and is an enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe. From 1984-97, Louis taught at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. He is currently Professor of English at Minnesota State University in Marshall. He has written ten books of poems and two works of fiction. Louis has won various awards including two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation.
A Profile of the Author
Notes
“Ghost Road” is simply a brief meditation on the grief that I was swimming in after my wife’s death. “Sunset at the Indian Cemetery” is self-explanatory up to a point and then intentionally muddles itself in irony. On one level it is an actual accounting of a visit to my wife’s grave. It also touches on loss of Native culture and land. Stylistically, these two poems seem typical of the stuff that I write.
Notes on Reading
In the past five years I have not read much that is new. I think this has something to do with aging. When I do read, I go back to books, especially poetry, that interested me when my life juices were flowing stronger. I read the collected T. S. Elliot, Life Studies by Lowell, Yeats, Neruda, even Stephen Crane. I read a lot of Native literature again and again and seem to keep returning to Silko, Ortiz, and Jim Northrup. Sometimes I like to open old books more for the smell than the words.
