Fire Water World: Poems - Softcover
Review:
Because
The Bloodwine Epigrams
Buckskin Vortex
The Chicken Blues
Couch Fantasy
Coyote Song
Cultural Dyslexia
Dandelion
Dead Cows At Agai Pah
Drunk With Merle Singing
Eagle Woman
Elegy For One Of Us
Elegy For The Forgotten Oldsmobile
Epiphany: Oxymoron
Epitaphs For Some Idiots I Have Been
Fallon Rodeo Long Time Ago
Farewell To Synthesis
The First And Last A.a. Meeting
First Car Remains
The First Of The Month
First Water World
For Wonder Bread Danny Quayle
The Hemingway Syndrome
Her Wake
How Us Halfbreeds Are
I Flew Into Denver April
Indian Cemetery; Lovelock, Nevada
Indian College Blues
It Is Not Clear
A Lie Of The Common Language
Los Chayules
Memento Mori
Messiah
Muted War Drums
Near Eighteenth Street
Pabst Blue Ribbon At Wounded Knee
Pine Ridge Lullaby
Platoon
Prophylaxis
Recurring Nightmare
A Reservation Situation
Rhetoric Leads To Cliche
The Sacred Circle
Sanctuary
Something About Being An Indian
South Dakota Woman
Sweets For The Dancing Bears
Thanksgiving At Pine Ridge
Thanksgiving Feast
Time Is The Fire
Urban Indian Suite: 1
Urban Indian Suite: 2
Urban Indian Suite: 3
Urban Indian Suite: 4
Wakinyan
The Walker River Night Is A Moist Dream
The Warehouse Chronicle
Warrior Song
White Clay, Nebraska
Without Words
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
This tough little book of poems by Adrian C. Louis gives a deep yet hard-edged portrait of certain aspects of contemporary Amerindian life. It also delivers a powerful vision to transform the traps of that life. In "soft whiskey voices," he and a friend talk as they sit,"both of us forty with pony tails / grown down long to our Levi butts." Then casting a reflective eye on the past in the present, he declares: "Yes, there's something about being an Indian / we say as we exit into the warmth / of Hell's secondary nature, / a place we call the Fire Water World." ("Something About Being an Indiaif'). There are many sad drinking poems and much hurt and anger in these verses, yet a forceful directness compels our recognition. Some poems seem directed to his Amerindian brothers and sisters, some to all of us. In 'The First of the Month" he contemplates: "Against my dark void of memories of blood upon blood White Clay, Nebraska explodes with a thousand faces of my drunken race cashing their welfare checks." The language in this book is colloquial and blunt, yet inside a tradition where it cuts and turns on you like a knife in the sun. Sometimes it works for realism and irony: "We wait and wonder and didn't ask why / we sit in our cars drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon." Sometimes it delivers a mythic beauty as in this portrait of "South Dakota Woman": "In your flanks I saw the blood drive / of brood mares. / In your flanks I saw my warrior sons." In this fourth book of poems, Louis contemplates his university life, while now living and working with his brothers and sisters on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota. his perspective is important, for while his language is often concrete and direct, it also moves with a magical energy through deep images. In "Sweets for Dancing Bears" he moves from the sharp realism of "Rolling down the sawdust aisles of switchblade tavems" into the "Visionary delights to my stranger's brain" where he asks, "Was it my false fur flaming or the milk tit of rain?" and concludes, "My engines were flooded, the windows were broken, and the bears / those darrin bears were dancing." The book closes on Louis leaving two wino brothers in the bush to face the hail, knowing, "Pain is easier to deal with than spirits." His is an original and needed voice-moving from the death inside the present toward a new day. -- From Independent Publisher
The Bloodwine Epigrams
Buckskin Vortex
The Chicken Blues
Couch Fantasy
Coyote Song
Cultural Dyslexia
Dandelion
Dead Cows At Agai Pah
Drunk With Merle Singing
Eagle Woman
Elegy For One Of Us
Elegy For The Forgotten Oldsmobile
Epiphany: Oxymoron
Epitaphs For Some Idiots I Have Been
Fallon Rodeo Long Time Ago
Farewell To Synthesis
The First And Last A.a. Meeting
First Car Remains
The First Of The Month
First Water World
For Wonder Bread Danny Quayle
The Hemingway Syndrome
Her Wake
How Us Halfbreeds Are
I Flew Into Denver April
Indian Cemetery; Lovelock, Nevada
Indian College Blues
It Is Not Clear
A Lie Of The Common Language
Los Chayules
Memento Mori
Messiah
Muted War Drums
Near Eighteenth Street
Pabst Blue Ribbon At Wounded Knee
Pine Ridge Lullaby
Platoon
Prophylaxis
Recurring Nightmare
A Reservation Situation
Rhetoric Leads To Cliche
The Sacred Circle
Sanctuary
Something About Being An Indian
South Dakota Woman
Sweets For The Dancing Bears
Thanksgiving At Pine Ridge
Thanksgiving Feast
Time Is The Fire
Urban Indian Suite: 1
Urban Indian Suite: 2
Urban Indian Suite: 3
Urban Indian Suite: 4
Wakinyan
The Walker River Night Is A Moist Dream
The Warehouse Chronicle
Warrior Song
White Clay, Nebraska
Without Words
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
This tough little book of poems by Adrian C. Louis gives a deep yet hard-edged portrait of certain aspects of contemporary Amerindian life. It also delivers a powerful vision to transform the traps of that life. In "soft whiskey voices," he and a friend talk as they sit,"both of us forty with pony tails / grown down long to our Levi butts." Then casting a reflective eye on the past in the present, he declares: "Yes, there's something about being an Indian / we say as we exit into the warmth / of Hell's secondary nature, / a place we call the Fire Water World." ("Something About Being an Indiaif'). There are many sad drinking poems and much hurt and anger in these verses, yet a forceful directness compels our recognition. Some poems seem directed to his Amerindian brothers and sisters, some to all of us. In 'The First of the Month" he contemplates: "Against my dark void of memories of blood upon blood White Clay, Nebraska explodes with a thousand faces of my drunken race cashing their welfare checks." The language in this book is colloquial and blunt, yet inside a tradition where it cuts and turns on you like a knife in the sun. Sometimes it works for realism and irony: "We wait and wonder and didn't ask why / we sit in our cars drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon." Sometimes it delivers a mythic beauty as in this portrait of "South Dakota Woman": "In your flanks I saw the blood drive / of brood mares. / In your flanks I saw my warrior sons." In this fourth book of poems, Louis contemplates his university life, while now living and working with his brothers and sisters on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota. his perspective is important, for while his language is often concrete and direct, it also moves with a magical energy through deep images. In "Sweets for Dancing Bears" he moves from the sharp realism of "Rolling down the sawdust aisles of switchblade tavems" into the "Visionary delights to my stranger's brain" where he asks, "Was it my false fur flaming or the milk tit of rain?" and concludes, "My engines were flooded, the windows were broken, and the bears / those darrin bears were dancing." The book closes on Louis leaving two wino brothers in the bush to face the hail, knowing, "Pain is easier to deal with than spirits." His is an original and needed voice-moving from the death inside the present toward a new day. -- From Independent Publisher
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- PublisherWest End Pr
- Publication date1989
- ISBN 10 0931122511
- ISBN 13 9780931122514
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages69
- Rating
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Fire Water World poems
Published by
West End Press, Albuquerque
(1989)
ISBN 10: 0931122511
ISBN 13: 9780931122514
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Paperback
First Edition
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Book Description Paperback. 69p., very good first edition trade paperback original in pictorial wraps. Born in Nevada and a member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe the poet lives in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Seller Inventory # 239648
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