Ceremonies of the Damned. - book reviews

Progressive, The, Jan, 1998 by Matthew Rothschild

Haunting, too, is Adrian C. Louis's new book of poems, Ceremonies of the Damned (University of Nevada Press). Alzheimer's disease afflicts Louis's wife, and he struggles in many of these poems (including "For You, These Flowers," which first appeared in The Progressive) with his feelings of anger, resentment, loneliness, and love. In language frank and spare, Louis lays it all out. Here is the opening of "It Has Come to This":

Three days a week I imprison you among

the shrieking aged, the palsied pukers, the

damned and abandoned, the certifiably

insane. I do this because I am weak and I

think I'm going crazy, too.

A member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe and a teacher at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation, he sets his poems against the backdrop of reservation life in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Nevada. There is no sentimentalizing here, either: "Overpriced cans of Spaghetti-Os/and Spam on the sad shelves." He writes about alcoholism and gangs, recklessness and hopelessness. "O Reservation. Home, home, hell."

Louis expresses his rage against the United States in several poems, including "A Colossal American Copulation." This poem begins and ends with these four lines:

They say there's a promise coming down

that dusty road. They say there's a

promise coming down that dusty road, but

I don't see it.

In between these bookends, Louis curses away:

So, fuck the bluebird of happiness. Fuck

the men who keep their dogs chained. Fuck

the men who molest their daughters.

He goes on like this for ninety-five more lines--it's a compendium of kiss-offs.

But my favorite three lines show up in "Good Morning America," where he links his wife's Alzheimer's with the nation's.

Deep down in the bowels of our

televisions,

America swims in the electric drool

of self-inflicted dementia.