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Evil Corn
This collection of hard-edged prose poems takes no prisoners. Louis walks the tightrope between the sacred and the profane with humor, anger, and compassion, all dispensed with a startling clarity of vision. These poems, written from 1999 to 2004, derive from Louis’s self-imposed exile in the rural deadlands of southwestern Minnesota.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
Published June 1, 2004
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About the author
Adrian C. Louis
35 books25 followersAdrian C. Louis is a Lovelock Paiute author from Nevada now living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has taught at Oglala Lakota College. His novel Skins (1995) discusses reservation life and issues such as poverty, alcoholism, and social problems and was the basis for the 2002 film, Skins. He has also published books of poetry and a collection of short stories, Wild Indians and Other Creatures (1996). His work is noted for its realism.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2025
Given no answers, I fall to the ground and root deep in the dead soil. I grasp dozens of evil spirits by the napes of their necks and spit them into the bleak sunshine. They smirk, give me the finger, and seep back into the dark, dark earth and I am left with nothing but the earthen mouth of a dirty, old man.
I'm not sure that it's fair I lump contemporary Native American writers all into the same aesthetic, especially because I've only read a few who even fit into that genre, but they do seem to coalesce around the things featured in the above quote: land, language, and iconoclasm.
The land is the lifeblood of a people, and the midwest to Adrian Louis is a poisoned, colonized place, full of Lutheran farmers who pretend to be concerned about family farms but are really just part of a big, faceless agriculture industry. The landscape has been homogenized into corn and soybean fields, and the lack of ecological (and demographic) diversity disturbs him. As a corollary, the language and iconoclasm go hand-in-hand. There certainly were some beautiful passages here and there, but most of the poems (all of which were prose) were exceptionally ugly, over-using alliteration and cliches to the point of satire. Initially I thought this "bad" writing was due to naivete, but I eventually realized it was due to the opposite, to a cynicism and irony which is the last refuge of a landless, disenchanted people. Thus, despite being an English professor himself, Louis's iconoclasm spanned both linguistics and patriotism. This was especially interesting in the wake of 9/11, and it felt especially pertinent in how often he referenced Palestine, 20 some years ahead of the curve.
Though I picked up the book because of it's laughably bad cover art, and I started reading it out of disbelief, I ended the book mostly enjoying the ride. I can't say I would recommend this to anyone, however, as the treatment of women in it was very dated and awkward to read. He didn't describe any exceptionally immoral acts in it, but he did objectify almost every single woman he mentioned. In one case, he sexualizes an international student of his, then gets mad at a female faculty member for walking in the room, cussing her out with the same verve that he cusses out the US government and others he hates: "I'm sorry--you bloodless box of useless facts. I'm sorry--you dryfuck chunk of blue eyes and sinew."
None of the topics he covered were that interesting, and mostly they repeated themselves throughout the book: he's a lonely middle aged guy with a wife dying of alzheimers, he lives with a bunch of pets (and he's still lonely), he hates teaching (because he can't fuck his students?), he's been sober for 13 years (and he's still lonely), blah blah blah. I'm not really sure that I believe the machismo and flippancy of Louis's work. Unlike Nietzsche and other genuinely crazy, original writers, Louis seems too often to betray his flaws on accident (such as the sexism) and to flex the insults just enough before pulling them back to layer in some big academic words (to keep that audience interested). Louis is probably the best (and most authentic, whatever that word might still mean) when discussing issues of race. Though he treats this just as flippantly as all the other topics, occasionally he approaches it very well, as in "Another Day in the English Dept. Or Meet Me at Medicine Tail Coulee," which features a white student saying "You Indians should be thankful you weren't all massacred." This outburst of accidental honesty might be shocking to us readers, but I doubt it's all that rare for Louis over the course of his long career. In the wake of this we actually see some vulnerability which isn't just hackneyed pet-worship, which probably aged the worst of all these poems; if you want to be subversive in today's American culture, just insult the pet industry, and you'd have everyone at your door. He's just as guilty of this as the white suburbanites he despises, but I doubt he even notices.
I find a similar sort of hypocrisy in the alt-right writers he accidentally parallels. People like Mike Ma take an extremely similar approach to language and culture, pretending to be subversive and iconoclastic, while if you scratched under the surface they're really putting on an elaborate show in order to be assholes and get away with saying edgy things because that's "just their aesthetic" or whatever. Not only does this often make them extremely dated in the examples they choose to lambast, but the problem is that it's never that convincing or interesting. The interesting moments in this collection come rather in moments of genuine (and possibly accidental) vulnerability, and in the opposite: moments of genuine chaos and schizophrenia. The gelatinous mass that fills the void between these two extremes becomes boring once you catch onto what's happening. It needs must repeat itself, because there's only so many ways to skin a cat.
Despite the follies of this type of writing, occasionally some brilliant lines slip through, such as:
In the end, the poet always betrays confidences. And in the end, the poet betrays himself by eating the dead flesh of past love.
or
No, no, please don't get up and go. Here, drink this chilled glass of blood. Savor it, toast my confusion, taste the dark prayers of my ancestors, their thick, saline sacrament.
It's in moments like these, coincidentally both at the end of poems, where I think Louis should have started (that is, if he was a sincere poet). But to him, sincerity is a luxury he doesn't believe he has. His politics and his identity won't allow him to start from this poetic endplace and explore explicitly the ramifications of these stories. He thinks he has to start with the concrete, and once the abstract aesthetic starts bubbling to the surface, he suddenly slams the book closed. Just as I'm getting interested, he ends the poem. This might be a way to pace chapters in a novel, but it's the worst way I can think of for pacing poems in a poetry collection. Sure, it kept me reading, racing ahead to the next poem, but I did so more out of frustration that that's all we got. I was left wanting more, which might be how you treat a lover, but it's not quite how you should treat a reader. You can't abuse a reader your entire book, then take away from them any consummation or closure. I mean I guess you can, but then your book gets two stars and deserves it.
I'm not sure that it's fair I lump contemporary Native American writers all into the same aesthetic, especially because I've only read a few who even fit into that genre, but they do seem to coalesce around the things featured in the above quote: land, language, and iconoclasm.
The land is the lifeblood of a people, and the midwest to Adrian Louis is a poisoned, colonized place, full of Lutheran farmers who pretend to be concerned about family farms but are really just part of a big, faceless agriculture industry. The landscape has been homogenized into corn and soybean fields, and the lack of ecological (and demographic) diversity disturbs him. As a corollary, the language and iconoclasm go hand-in-hand. There certainly were some beautiful passages here and there, but most of the poems (all of which were prose) were exceptionally ugly, over-using alliteration and cliches to the point of satire. Initially I thought this "bad" writing was due to naivete, but I eventually realized it was due to the opposite, to a cynicism and irony which is the last refuge of a landless, disenchanted people. Thus, despite being an English professor himself, Louis's iconoclasm spanned both linguistics and patriotism. This was especially interesting in the wake of 9/11, and it felt especially pertinent in how often he referenced Palestine, 20 some years ahead of the curve.
Though I picked up the book because of it's laughably bad cover art, and I started reading it out of disbelief, I ended the book mostly enjoying the ride. I can't say I would recommend this to anyone, however, as the treatment of women in it was very dated and awkward to read. He didn't describe any exceptionally immoral acts in it, but he did objectify almost every single woman he mentioned. In one case, he sexualizes an international student of his, then gets mad at a female faculty member for walking in the room, cussing her out with the same verve that he cusses out the US government and others he hates: "I'm sorry--you bloodless box of useless facts. I'm sorry--you dryfuck chunk of blue eyes and sinew."
None of the topics he covered were that interesting, and mostly they repeated themselves throughout the book: he's a lonely middle aged guy with a wife dying of alzheimers, he lives with a bunch of pets (and he's still lonely), he hates teaching (because he can't fuck his students?), he's been sober for 13 years (and he's still lonely), blah blah blah. I'm not really sure that I believe the machismo and flippancy of Louis's work. Unlike Nietzsche and other genuinely crazy, original writers, Louis seems too often to betray his flaws on accident (such as the sexism) and to flex the insults just enough before pulling them back to layer in some big academic words (to keep that audience interested). Louis is probably the best (and most authentic, whatever that word might still mean) when discussing issues of race. Though he treats this just as flippantly as all the other topics, occasionally he approaches it very well, as in "Another Day in the English Dept. Or Meet Me at Medicine Tail Coulee," which features a white student saying "You Indians should be thankful you weren't all massacred." This outburst of accidental honesty might be shocking to us readers, but I doubt it's all that rare for Louis over the course of his long career. In the wake of this we actually see some vulnerability which isn't just hackneyed pet-worship, which probably aged the worst of all these poems; if you want to be subversive in today's American culture, just insult the pet industry, and you'd have everyone at your door. He's just as guilty of this as the white suburbanites he despises, but I doubt he even notices.
I find a similar sort of hypocrisy in the alt-right writers he accidentally parallels. People like Mike Ma take an extremely similar approach to language and culture, pretending to be subversive and iconoclastic, while if you scratched under the surface they're really putting on an elaborate show in order to be assholes and get away with saying edgy things because that's "just their aesthetic" or whatever. Not only does this often make them extremely dated in the examples they choose to lambast, but the problem is that it's never that convincing or interesting. The interesting moments in this collection come rather in moments of genuine (and possibly accidental) vulnerability, and in the opposite: moments of genuine chaos and schizophrenia. The gelatinous mass that fills the void between these two extremes becomes boring once you catch onto what's happening. It needs must repeat itself, because there's only so many ways to skin a cat.
Despite the follies of this type of writing, occasionally some brilliant lines slip through, such as:
In the end, the poet always betrays confidences. And in the end, the poet betrays himself by eating the dead flesh of past love.
or
No, no, please don't get up and go. Here, drink this chilled glass of blood. Savor it, toast my confusion, taste the dark prayers of my ancestors, their thick, saline sacrament.
It's in moments like these, coincidentally both at the end of poems, where I think Louis should have started (that is, if he was a sincere poet). But to him, sincerity is a luxury he doesn't believe he has. His politics and his identity won't allow him to start from this poetic endplace and explore explicitly the ramifications of these stories. He thinks he has to start with the concrete, and once the abstract aesthetic starts bubbling to the surface, he suddenly slams the book closed. Just as I'm getting interested, he ends the poem. This might be a way to pace chapters in a novel, but it's the worst way I can think of for pacing poems in a poetry collection. Sure, it kept me reading, racing ahead to the next poem, but I did so more out of frustration that that's all we got. I was left wanting more, which might be how you treat a lover, but it's not quite how you should treat a reader. You can't abuse a reader your entire book, then take away from them any consummation or closure. I mean I guess you can, but then your book gets two stars and deserves it.
March 16, 2014
By all accounts I shouldn't really like this book. It's vulgar, bitter. Hates the world and abandons hope. Often sexist. Hates Minnesota. I sympathize so heavily with the themes but they made me mad at the same time for some reason, I don't know. This kind of poetry just doesn't settle with you. It isn't the sort of poetry that you agree or disagree with--it's a story. There's nothing to dispute...which may be why it's so unsettling.
So why do I love this poetry so much? Why did I repeat lines in my head all night? Because it's damn good writing. It's honest, frank. Seriously dirty. It has a rhythm of its own, which I don't read in prose poetry much. Louis writes about the sort of stuff I keep way, way hidden from other people, and that takes guts.
He's a professor at my college and I saw him smoking outside the building once. He sort of scared me. Now he only scares me more. I probably shouldn't be writing this on the internet, but oh well. GoodReads asks for honesty.
So why do I love this poetry so much? Why did I repeat lines in my head all night? Because it's damn good writing. It's honest, frank. Seriously dirty. It has a rhythm of its own, which I don't read in prose poetry much. Louis writes about the sort of stuff I keep way, way hidden from other people, and that takes guts.
He's a professor at my college and I saw him smoking outside the building once. He sort of scared me. Now he only scares me more. I probably shouldn't be writing this on the internet, but oh well. GoodReads asks for honesty.
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