Synopses & Reviews
In his third book of poetry, Edgar Gabriel Silex explores the ways love confronts us. Devastatingly honest, these poems begin with "children transported in confusions of love"and examine relationships within the family and with lovers, and "how our love, for our most precious things, is soiled with our shameful behaviors, by our acceptance of doubt and melancholia."
The general movement of the poems is affirmative, traveling from pain of childhood trauma through understanding to the point where the narrator is able to break the cycle of violence and conclude "we will remember / everything in beauty."
Edgar Silex comments that he "writes poetry because he believes that a state of grace is our ultimate human condition, forgiveness is our highest form of love, awe is our only muse, suffering is our path to salvation, beauty is our only reward, displacement is our human inheritance, passion is our only freedom, restraint is our act of kindness, solitude is our wisest friend, simplicity is our most complex desire, reverence is our highest achievement, and poetry is our most constant state."Mr. Silex has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Maryland State Council for the Arts. He is the author of Through All the Displacements. He lives in Laurel, Maryland and teaches at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Review
"Edgar Gabriel Silex is a storyteller. His poems understand and relate the stories of our spirit, our history, our possibility, and they ask us to forgive ourselves. I believe him to be a wonderful poet. Wonderful." -- Lucille Clifton
Review
"The poems in Acts of Love challenge individual experience with the largest of spiritual contexts: for Edgar Silex compassion and conscience are cosmology. His universe, though scarred with streets and chilled with violent rooms, surrounds the human world with a seamless intelligence. In never looking away, Silex ultimately comes to a view of beauty. Closer in, his words never let go of the hands of those who have suffered." -- Sandra McPherson
Review
"Ultimately, despite his willingness to look at the uglier side of human love, Silex moves toward healing and hope, recognizes that 'these torments are unspoken prayers / by which we learn grace and wisdom,' that the 'divine . . . makes a gift of each day.' We will, he says 'remember / everything in beauty / we will remember everything / in beauty / that is the thread / we are woven from." -- Jessica Powers, New Pages
Synopsis
In his third book of poetry, Edgar Gabriel Silex explores the ways love confronts us. Devastatingly honest, these poems begin with "children transported in confusions of love" and examine relationships within the family and with lovers, and "how our love, for our most precious things, is soiled with our shameful behaviors, by our acceptance of doubt and melancholia."
The general movement of the poems is affirmative, traveling from pain of childhood trauma through understanding to the point where the narrator is able to break the cycle of violence and conclude "we will remember / everything in beauty."
About the Author
Edgar Silex comments that he "writes poetry because he believes that a state of grace is our ultimate human condition, forgiveness is our highest form of love, awe is our only muse, suffering is our path to salvation, beauty is our only reward, displacement is our human inheritance, passion is our only freedom, restraint is our act of kindness, solitude is our wisest friend, simplicity is our most complex desire, reverence is our highest achievement, and poetry is our most constant state." Mr. Silex has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Maryland State Council for the Arts. He is the author of Through All the Displacements. He lives in Laurel, Maryland and teaches at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Table of Contents
Theory of Mind
Aftermath
The Shadows of Words
The Feminist's Daughter
Acts of Love
For Chris
Hell
In the City of Angels
The Creator
Matins
Rwandan Spring
Aubade
Departure
Distances
My Brother's Song
Elegy
The Library of Lost Souls
Dream Fish
On the Way to Giant's
Girl on the Threshold
Chief Nanay Appears in the Holy Land
Fin de Siecle
Fireflies
Ode With a Lament
Pathogenesis
For Cesar Chavez
Returning the Gift
Story
Chain of Becoming
Latin Kings
The Evening Route
The Myth Game
Freedom
Swastika
What We've Made
The Existentialist
On Prayers and Angels
How to Write a Poem
Haiku
Titles of Books Recently Purchased by the Woman He Had Finally Left
The Gift
Your Silence
Sage
Haiku
Everything Breathes
The Beautiful Thread