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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9781931896061
ISBN: 1931896062
Label: Curbstone Press
Manufacturer: Curbstone Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 68
Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Studio: Curbstone Press

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.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The darker side of love
Review: I was first introduced to Silex while I was in college - I immediately was capivated by his use of language. "Acts of Love" is an excellent collection of poems that detail the darker parts of love and life - yet still manages to keep the hope and joy of love alive. It is surely an excellent read and worth pcking up time and time again.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Perfectly showcases his impressive gift with language
Review: Acts Of Love is author and poet Edgar Gabriel Silex's most recent compilation and perfectly showcases his impressive gift with language in an almost "stream of consciousness" verse that can unflinching reveal the problematic side of human relationships and the obtainable necessity of emotional healing and the salvational hope of enduring love. Girl on the Threshold: she is sitting on the threshold/outside the blue doors to her house/wearing Love's red dress/bright and vibrating heart-red/against a big blue sky of doors/the bombs have been falling all night/shots can be heard everywhere/how long has she been waiting there/for her father the civil officers/who went out to defend their home/her gaze is fixed down the street/toward the way he always returns/how long will she be waiting there/pensively sucking on her thumb

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