Electric Snakes

by Adrian C. Louis

In Electric Snakes, Adrian C. Louis’s thirteenth poetry collection, no one is spared his critical eye, including himself. These powerful and often humorous poems cover myriad subjects: Trump, music, zombies, Jimmy John’s, childhood, caller ID, venetian blinds, magpies, love, and Mom.
—From the Editor

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2018

About the author

Adrian 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.

Reviews

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if electric snakes are the ouroboros eating their own tale for tail? This is somewhere between myth and legend and man and before and after without the sentimental Indian prototype — unless it gives a momentary laugh to settlers like me. Settlers like Me would be a great band name. We’d play white noise and apologize for being too loud and for staying too long.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adrian C. Louis is a desperately needed voice in these times, and a poet who crumples up and disposes of convention and communicates right along the mainline in searing (and in the case of this book, electric) verse. These electric snakes are giving up their venom.

Vacuity

Soaring on eagle wings.
Engine stalls. In a nosedive.
The rising earth greets me.
I have pierced the ground.
I am swimming through
deep, dark soil, but I stop
when I see Wovoka’s bones
ghost-dancing toward me.
I ask what he’s doing here
under these Plains & shouldn’t
he be resting in Schurz, NV.
“Underground I can run fast
as a speeding bullet,” he says.
I ask him what the point
of that is but he runs away
fast without answering.
What the holy hell is this
dead world coming to?

[Johnny Cordova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good poets makes me want to write poetry. Others make me question how much I really love poetry after all. Adrian C. Louis gets my juices flowing. I love his easy style.

This collection is uneven but there are moments of sheer brilliance that help one not mind the unevenness at all.