As the self-mocking title implies, Louis’ 12th book of poetry is an opening up of the mind, a venting on a number of different subjects, some which will be familiar to long-time readers and some which will be new. These poems strike me as collection of postcards from the edge—the edge of the rez, the edge of academia, the edge of civilized America, and the edge of a bar stool— all written by an aging half-breed Indian teaching at a small college to earn his paycheck. Often they are more intimate than is, and that is by design. In poem after poem just as he pulls himself out of slothful complacency, he urges the same of his readers— to open a critical eye to their own lives and all that surrounds them.

Themes covered include his Indian ancestry, identity, alcoholism, poverty, hopelessness, hypocrisy, lost loves, and more recently the encroachment of old age, and ever sharper criticisms of intellectualism and academia. He is not bashful about talking jabs at politicians of all persuasions, especially the current administration, and almost always couches his poems in a mordant sense of humor.

Some critics have likened Louis to a Bukowski with a strong sense of community. While there are similarities in the use of profane, conversational language and explicit scenes, Louis is the more polished poet, and this sense of community is always at the center of his work. One poem, in particular, stands out for me as a characteristic mixing of the sacred religious past with the profane present:

Louis is at his best when he is most brutally honest, tackles his subject head-on and avoids an occasionally overwrought tendency for verbal circumlocution. One of the most stunning, heartbreaking and well-crafted poems in Logorrhea is addressed to his wife, an Alzheimer's patient in a nursing home:

Logorrhea may be uneven from start to finish, but it is unquestionably honest, sincere and truthful, and its power arises from the harsh, hard-won truths it reveals. Louis looks the life he knows dead in the eye, and attempts to capture its cruel beauty and futility. This book doesn't have the spleen of some of his earlier efforts, but it is still worth the investment.

60 Cent Coffee, Jordan’s second volume of poetry, is a book length poem that chronicles a time in her life when she was homeless, working as a pizza deliveryman at a Greek immigrant-owned restaurant. It marks a radical departure from the rural landscapes of Carolina Ghost Woods, Its daring narrative skillfully weaves together the lives and histories of Jordan, and the experiences of her coworkers, the street walkers and the homeless with whom she shares a common plight. The chorus of voices blends into a haunting melody that records the hopes, dreams and quiet alienation of those living in the underbelly of society.

Three characters dominate the poem: Jordan, the narrator, Chris, the Greek immigrant cook, whose boyhood was scared by Nazi occupation and civil war, and Princess, the prostitute, whose compatriots die young from disease, drug addiction, or at the hands of johns or pimps. Their lives move through varying degrees of misery and poverty to intersect in time at the restaurant, and Jordan gives them voice to tell their stories to the world. She describes her own situation at the time:

Jordan paints a graphic portrait of the short, dangerous lives of the parking lot prostitutes through the voice of Princess, the irony of whose pseudonym should not go unnoticed. Some of these passages lapse into the stereotypical and mark the weak point of the book. But some remain freshly poetic as she describes her own life and the lives of her friends as they are extinguished like brief candles:

Perhaps the most compelling voice in this litany of voices is that of Chris the Greek immigrant cook as he speaks of his struggles to survive both in the US and in his boyhood through the Nazi occupation of Greece. Jordan provides Chris with some of the most horrific, yet beautifully written passages in the book: