Sam Silva mixes poetry, lyrical prose and acoustic guitar in this CD. He has a great reading voice that effectively conveys the passion and gravity of his words. As always the language is arranged in a way that demonstrates this writer's understanding of sound and language as instrument. The surprise to me was how well he orchestrates on the guitar. My only problem with this CD is that it leaves me wanting more.

Sam Silva writes from shadows and of shadows. In listening to, and reading, the fourteen pieces of THE BLISSFUL(L?) ART OF THE MOMENT, I find myself granted access to an inner world, often unfamiliar and alien but then, unexpectedly and with a jolt connected to something touchingly familiar or almost familiar. Sam sets me puzzles – is it Carter who has a "personal level of physical fatigue" (why the qualifier "physical" here?) In this same opening piece ("An Empire in Hopeless Decline"), I wondered whether Sef is the Sef of Silva's longer work, "Eating and Drinking". His "ancient catastrophe" suggested the "encroachment of that old catastrophe" (the crucifixion) in Wallace Stevens' powerful Sunday Morning. Again in this piece, there are a number of haunting phrases, some over-obscure to this reader, but some quite telling such as "Wars became or suggested themselves" and "rights of the universal citizen". There are thirteen more pieces. I must promptly turn terser, or this review won't be read. In "Things of Childhood Flesh", experiences recognizable and alien are joined—"a skew of possibilities" and "after the simple dream is full" refresh, empower, while "as wicked as the cream we jerk dreaming dense realities against the Martian skies" loses me. In "The Blissful Art of the Moment" we find occasional endrhymes a bit reminiscent of the rhyme pattern of "Dover Beach". This piece, like "An Empire in Hopeless Decline", includes direct social commentary ("dusty walks which the heel of progress dirties", "genes from some strange cow", "blossoms which perfume a sewer"). The fourth piece "In Viewing This Strange Monster" begins with a froggy troll, who seems to be connected in Silva's mind with crass Main Street. "The Sweet Debauch of Nicotine" is often clarity embedded in fog – what could be clearer than "smoky laughter unto death...caring not enough to act with passions (sic: passion's?) power and heavy breath", and what more obscure than "a buried coin I meet the debt in such a sad nefarious pact" – what pact? The Thin Girl at the Window includes "from source to fire, from name to desire, from lovely lust to passionate giver" but Silva leaves us free to visualize the window, the girl, and the window as we see fit. The seventh piece, Of Passion and Angels is the most optimistic piece so far. No matter who "you" are, your being "the artist and the orchid, the gardener and the land! the wind that blows about my tower of angels where I stand" brings back "oldie but goodie" panegyrics to "you", like Hammerstein's "All the Things You Are" (the promised breath of springtime, etc.) of a half-century ago, now terrifically embroidered on the Arts Channel by Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. The thirteenth piece, "Perhaps a Painting" surely expresses loving worship to the same "you" ("you are the wings and the song and the dance...the muse I swear I have found...") On the East Ward evokes asylum life brilliantly: "fire's insipid bloom", "mind cued by levers", "the great TV" with its entombing flickering lights. Calling Out to You appears to be sequel (or prequel?) to Of Passion and Angels ("From my summer hill I taste your absence...the ease and the thrill, the form and the substance, the frown and the smile"). This Rose and These Ideas, sad and self-deprecatory ("these ideas so long mumbled"), we hope is not a sequel ("with petals for the moment's lonely thorn"). The Pure Heart in the Dark, tell of satisfaction after struggle ("beyond seductions, glories...sullen labors justify themselves"), apparently of both the poet and Ishtar (I wonder why Ishtar). The last unmentioned pieces are The Green of the Garden is Full of its Meaning, and In a Brief Time Here. Both include the poet's expression of weakness ("I need to be led like an idiot child" and "the footfalls of my art wandering away"). In sum, though at times a reader may wonder whether Silva is conning us, finding originality by drawing words out of a hat, it is often a creative and moving originality. I recommend you listen to the CD as well as read this chapbook/album, since Silva's four guitar interludes are lovely.

As prolific and widely published as he is, Sam Silva is a poet whose reputation is clearly established-- perhaps most so for the countless ezines in which his work has appeared. Indeed, Silva is in his element at his computer. And though his poetry is widely read, readings from the poet have been few and far between-- until now. Recorded at the desk of his home computer, The Blissful Art of the Moment offers a rare and intimate listen to the bard himself.