Ancient Acid Flashes Back: Poems

by Adrian C. Louis

Overview

Ancient Acid Flashes Back is the true story of one who was there——and remembers——through the cloying marijuana haze, around the jagged edges of L.A. cross tops and crystal cranks, on wild windowpane trips, in the sweetness and sweat of tangled young bodies, in the stench of stale vomit and fresh garbage, in the raucous laughter of desperation and fear. In this remarkable collection of poems, Adrian Louis, a member of the Paiute tribe, beams us back to the Haight during the Summer of Love and beyond on an inimitable tour of the wild side of youth, freedom, and possibility.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874173529
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	09/01/2000
Series:	Western Literature Series
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Adrian C. Louis was born and raised in Nevada and is an enrolled member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe. He teaches at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He has numerous books of poetry and stories and awards to his credit.

What People are Saying About This

Bill Holm

Ancient Acid Flashes Back is not a random collection of poems, but a single long poem, a meditation on American history observed through the prism of a young half-breed’s odyssey to the Haight in the days when it was a prime American metaphor. It is, indeed, a kind of small epic — not a song of self-indulgent complaint, but a Homeric journey downward into the roots of our national consciousness. The news Louis finds is not good, but it is bracing, and, I think, true. There is a kind of strange beauty in the rugged, unsentimental honesty of this book.

Andrei Codrescu

There is no border in these poems between the politics of the heart and the politics of the land. The music that fills this body of stories is direct and ancient. Still, it sounds like no one else's.

Thomas Lux

I've admired the poems of Adrian C. Louis for many years. No other American poet sings better than he does. No American poet knows how to grieve or rage better than he does. Ancient Acid Flashes Back is a beautiful and terrifyingly true book.

Editorial Reviews

"Louis may be the best vernacular poet in America. He uses harsh, slangy, obscene language with unself-conscious mastery and the authenticity of coming from harsh and obscene circumstances." —Booklist


"There is no border in these poems between the politics of the heart and the politics of the land. The music that fills this body of stories is direct and ancient. Still, it sounds like no one else’s." —Andrei Codrescu, author of Bibliodeath
 


"I’ve admired the poems of Adrian C. Louis for many years. No other American poet sings better than he does. No American poet knows how to grieve or rage better than he does. Ancient Acid Flashes Back is a beautiful and terrifyingly true book." —Thomas Lux, author of Child Made of Sand

From the Publisher