Deposited on the periphery of a Southern breeding ground for war and violence lives a poet whose perceptive awareness of its deceptions and sometimes ruthless battlefields initiates us into the loves and losses of its myriad inhabitants. For Sam Silva, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, represents more than just living and dying in a military town. The poems in this chapbook, Love in a Soldier Town, capture the nuanced processions of survival that all of us must navigate if quality of life means anything at all. What Silva shares with his readers are gleaming slivers of Fayetteville, a city and its people, whose history harkens to the Civil War and whose evolution into an outgrowth of the military reservation has transformed it into a place for personal dreams and nightmares and a retailer’s paradise.

From beginning to end Silva more than just matriculates on the world around him; he lives and breathes its wistful, joyous and sad contributions to the soldiers and civilians who try to eke out a haven amid the horrors of rapid deployment and loneliness.

“…where loveless soldiers learn to live
at noon…
…in this near empty soldier town
where Heaven is a glass of beer”

from “FORT BRAGG, N.C. (for Dick)”

“An empty and foreboding loss
which human virtue barely handles
…when the spirit of the world
has gone insane.”

from “LOVE IN A SOLDIER TOWN”

Ensconced in these lines reside poems describing snippets of places and people whose resourceful and enthusiastic responses to this madness include love, art, and music: three things that for Silva are both passionate muses and escapes from the fray.

“waiting for an acre of peace
beyond the quiet, blood and violence
of an ordinary day.”

from “DRINKING IT IN”

“Even in Winter, the Sun will warm,
the sky will sing,
the plants will decay
and enshrine
the heart
in a late valentine
in early March
with its sparkling art.”

from “EVEN WITHOUT A THING TO SAY”

Silva has managed to publish voraciously in his long career, and to his credit, he has gotten no worse for the wear. This recent offering not only showcases his maturity as a poet, it illuminates his life and the lives of those around him. Love in a Soldier Town is a must-read for any aficionado of an established poet whose offerings manage to encapsulate, with a singular voice, stark reality and unencumbered beauty.