Three Tiny Poetic Chronicles by D.L. Siluk

Three Tiny Poetic Chronicles
(From November, 2007)


Poems to be part of the book, “Silence over a Restless Valley”
To be published July, 2008



By Poet Laureate, Dennis L. Siluk



Visiting Apolinario in his Library
(Reference to Poet and Journalist, Apolinario Mayta Inga)

(A Minute Chronicle, in Poetic Prose)


The stone and dirt road seemed empty and silent, a warm day in the summer of 2007, in Huancayo, Peru, high up in the sierras. We walked the street to his home. We climbed the stairs to his library. A man who looks like a reserved professor, more so than a poet—, brings my wife and I in, saying, “I’ve read and heard about you, and have some paper clippings on you, been following you for a while now, a few years (he is writing a book on poets and writers),” and waving with his hands, as to have us seated. On his face there is pride, labor for being well read, and hope, this is not a carefree poet, teacher or journalist, but a mountain climber, carving his face onto granite, wrestling against the wind, undefeated by the dust of the earth.
On his walls are awards, pictures. He is hesitant, allows me to absorb his library. He has no evil intentions; he knows we may meet in the other life.
Here are two poets in a boat, made of books, and scholarly works, we are on his island at the moment, which looks more like a college professor’s room, during the grading period. We talked; we both have deep lines in our foreheads, and it is from the heavy flow of life.


No: 2058 (11-18-2007)





Just Before Dark
((A Minnesota, 1950s Poem) (Dedicated to my Brother, Mike Siluk))


(A Minute Chronicle, in Poetic Prose)



The street lights go on, day is quickly turning into night, and thus, the dogs start returning to their warm homes. It is winter in Minnesota, in the late, 1950s. My brother and I, rush across the empty lot, to reach our home just before dark, we sleep together—that is, across from one other, in the attic bedroom, under a slanting roof, and exposed chimney. I can see the birds return to their nests (of weeds, twigs and grass), from the window; darkness brings everyone home, a place prepared for rest—, be it in the cities, along the coast, or in the mountains, just before dark.

No: 2054 (11-18-2007)




Old Dan the Horse
((A Minnesota, 1950s Poem)

(A Minute Chronicle, in Poetic Prose)


Through the fence, I’m feeding Old Dan the Horse, with hay;
I can hear him crunching away, ripping it alongside his teeth—
A gluttonous sound indeed, as his sides extend in, then out…

Our lives—(a horse and a boy) are a farm and a fence;
Behind us are weedy pastures, cows and wild flowers.

Old Dan, is Old, his life is almost over, mine just beginning.
Hard lines run though his body, he is like seven old horses pacing…!

(Now, fifty-five years have past, I can now understand Old Dan)



No: 2057 (11-18-2007)







Spanish Version



Tres Diminutas Crónicas Poéticas
(De Noviembre, 2007)


Poemas parte del libro, “Silencio sobre un Valle Inquieto”
A ser publicado en Julio del 2008


Por el Poeta Laureado, Dennis L. Siluk



Visitando Apolinario en su Biblioteca
(En referencia al Poeta y Periodista, Apolinario Mayta Inga)

(Una Crónica Diminuta, en Prosa Poética)

La calle de piedra y tierra parecía vacía y silenciosa, un día caluroso en el verano del 2007, en Huancayo, Perú, muy alto en las sierras. Caminamos la calle hacia su casa. Subimos las escaleras a su biblioteca. Un hombre que luce como un profesor reservado, más que un poeta—, nos lleva dentro a mi esposa y yo, diciendo, “He leído y escuchado acerca de ti, y tengo algunos recortes de periódicos sobre ti, te he estado siguiendo por un tiempo ahora, unos cuantos años” (él está escribiendo un libro sobre poetas y escritores), e indicándonos con sus manos, nos invita a sentarnos. En su cara hay orgullo, esfuerzo por ser bien instruido, y esperanza, este no es una poeta despreocupado, profesor o periodista, sino un escalador de montañas, tallando su cara sobre granito, luchando contra el viento, invencible por el polvo de la tierra.
En las paredes de su casa hay galardones, cuadros. Él está indeciso, me permite absorber su biblioteca. Él no tiene malas intenciones; él sabe que puede que nos encontremos en la otra vida.
Aquí están dos poetas en un bote, hecho de libros, y trabajos eruditos, estamos en su isla en el momento, que parece más como un cuarto de profesor de universidad, durante el periodo de evaluación. Hablamos; ambos tenemos profundas líneas de expresión en nuestras frentes, y esto es por el pesado flujo de vida.

# 2058 (18-Nov-07)




Justo Antes de la Oscuridad
((Un Poema de Minnesota, 1950s) (Dedicado a mi hermano, Mike Siluk))


(Una Crónica Diminuta, en Prosa Poética)



Las luces de las calles se encienden, el día está rápidamente volviéndose en noche, y así, los perros empiezan a regresar a sus calientes casas. Es invierno en Minnesota, en los últimos años de los 1950s. Mi hermano y yo, corremos a través del vacío lote, para llegar a nuestra casa justo antes de la oscuridad, dormimos juntos—esto es, uno al frente del otro, en el dormitorio del ático, debajo de un techo inclinado, y chimenea expuesta. Puedo ver a los pájaros volver a sus nidos (hecho de mala hierba, ramitas y pasto), desde la ventana; la oscuridad trae a todos a casa, un lugar preparado para descansar—, esté este en las ciudades, a lo largo de la costa, o en las montañas, justo antes de la oscuridad.

# 2054 (18-Nov-07)




El Caballo Viejo Dan
(Un Poema de Minnesota, 1950s)

(Una Crónica Diminuta, en Prosa Poética)


A través de las rejas, estoy alimentando al Caballo Viejo Dan, con heno;
Puedo oírlo a él mordisqueando, rasgando a lo largo de sus dientes—
Un sonido glotón de verdad, mientras sus costados se extienden dentro, después fuera…
Nuestras vidas--- (la de un caballo y la de un niño) son una granja y una cerca;
Detrás de nosotros hay pastos cubiertos de malas hierbas, vacas y flores silvestres.
Viejo Dan, es Viejo, su vida casi está terminando, la mía justo empezando.
¡Líneas duras corren a través de su cuerpo, él es como siete caballos viejos paseando…!

(Ahora, cincuenta y cinco años han pasado, y puedo ahora entender al Viejo Dan)
# 2057 (18-Nov-07)

Disintegration of the Species

By Dennis L. Siluk

(An Essay)


I live as an idealist, what this really means to me is I live and appreciate life on earth, be it fair or not fair around me. It doesn’t matter if one becomes important or not to the world, or even if one sees it—perhaps he or she will only see his or her surrounding area, life is a gift, and I appreciate it, my mother did also. Now I want to take this one step further.
We have been given instinct (for survival purposes, matter-of-fact, I trust my instinct more than my thinking or feelings, they are normally correct, or ore correct); also the nuclear family we have been given, or group for social outlets care and comfort, any sociologist, or anthropologist will confirm that it is important for one to become a healthy whole person, and this group socializing is part of that issue. We also have been given reproduction, meaning: a way to continue with our species. In-between, all this we have been given intuition, a tinge different than instinct, it makes us seek out and find our God (we can also call it spirituality), some folks choose something less than God to fill this hole, but be that as it may, he will never feel complete filling it with anything less.
Now I must go on to the third step of my essay, to windup what I am leaning towards. Today in America, we’ve all but lost our family importance (as did Rome and so many other great nations of the past). And we are fast losing our need for God (and with all the sorrow about we have lost the appreciation for live, simply look at the suicides): thus, we have only disintegration to look forward to. We evidently have not learned from history, we preserve liberty at the cost of producing inequality, or disparity—take your pick. It is a shame; perhaps we should look around us, and see that liberty is not all it is made up to be, those rights we seek, without responsibility. Peru is learning that lesson now. Lawlessness runs ramped there because everyone yells ‘liberty’, and the robber, also, and the police do little, because of liberty, their hands are tied. Perhaps it would be less dangerous to live with a little less liberty, and a little more fairness and laws that do not tie ones hands.
In Peru, the robber is somewhat safe; in America he is thrown in prison for little things, and lives off the taxes of the people. In both case liberty has lost its luster.

11-13-2007

Will Durant vs. D.L. Siluk

By Dennis L. Siluk

(An Essay)


(Durant and his book: “The Story of Civilization”) You may be asking, ‘What does Will Durant, the writer of ‘The Story of Civilization,’ have to do with me, Dennis L. Siluk. It seems he and I had a long relationship, although we’ve never met one another. Let me first outline in the shortest of terms, Will Durant, and his wife Arial.
Will Durant was born 1885, and died 1981. His most famous writing was that of “The Story of Philosophy,” which sold 200,000-copies in the 1920s. He started writing it as chapter, Blue Books, putting them all together between 1923 thru 1926, and making it a volume (it took him three years to write the book).
Between 1915, and 1929, he was dreaming of making a five volume set of history books, mixed with philosophy, in the following years he traveled the world. In 1929 to 1975, he would continue to write an eleven volume set of history books called, “The Story of Civilization.” It would remain a ten volume set until 1975, when he finished after four years, writing the 1500-page book which was cut down, on Napoleon.
This was not his last book, rather his Dual Autobiography which took him two years to write, was his last work to my knowledge, published in 1977, and he of course died in 1981, four years thereafter.
The first of his volumes was started six years before its publication date, and were 1,049-pages long, dealing with Oriental History, published in July of 1935.
In 1938, Mr. Durant drafted, or put into an outline form, a ten volume set of history books, yet he had only published one of the ten at this time. He was at this time working on the second volume, dealing with Greece. In 1939, he submitted it for publication. And then started work on Volume three, in 1943, and finished it in 1945, dealing with Christ and Caesar; after that, in the same year he started work on The Age of Faith, volume four.
To make a long story short, this is how his set of historical books progressed. But now I want to incorporate my relationship with his books which date back to 1971, or 36-years ago for me.


(Dennis Siluk’s Connection) I was going over and over in my head about the set of history books by Mr. and Mrs. Durant, and it came to mind, I had a history with all this, with him, even though he did not know it. Matter of fact, we had a history for ten-years while he was living, between 1971, to his death in 1981. Let me explain.
When I got out of the Army, and Vietnam, in 1971, I went back home to St. Paul, Minnesota. I had not gone to college yet, but I wanted to. Thus I bought a set of Mr. Durant’s “The Story of Civilization.” I read most of it, and got the travel bug, although I always had it. I had been to Asia, and Europe, and Mexico and Canada. But not yet to such places as Java, and Egypt, India, Cambodia, etcetera. I suppose his books would provoke a side of me to those countries, since now I have gone to them, plus fifty- five other countries, and forty-six states. Actually, most of the places Mr. Durant traveled I traveled, and you might even add a few more.
The point I want to make is this, I bought this set of books in 1971, at that time it was a nine or ten volume set. Then in 1973, I moved from Minnesota to Erie, Pennsylvania, I had sold the previous set, feeling I could not travel with such a load, I had a 1965-Ford Galaxy, and it was just enough room for my two young kids, Cody and Shawn, and my ex wife now, of that time. Thus, in 1973 I bought my second volume, but only had it for a year, I went back into the Army, and back to Germany in 1974. In 1975, I ordered a new set to be sent to me in Germany, and to my surprise, it was now an eleven volume set, Will Durant with Ariel his wife had added the times of Napoleon to it. I remember hoping he’d do one more leading into the twentieth century, but I guess it world have taken perhaps three volumes to do that, and he was aging, I mean, in 1975 he was 90-years old, and started working on his dual autobiography.
Well, it didn’t stop there, I left Germany and the Army in 1980, and again, lost track of my set of history books by Durant, and in 1981 ordered a new set while doing graduate studies at the University of Minnesota I kept that set until 2005, when I sent 500- books from my Minnesota Library to Lima Peru, for my new library in my home there, the books never made it, I had sold them to a friend, and they were too heavy. Anyhow, that was my forth set.
Now it is 2007, and I have ordered my 5th set, along with his Autobiography, and ‘The Story of Philosophy’ thus I once again will have my whole set intact.
It is funny how things work out. I never had a signed book by him, but now I got one, that also is a treasure. So I hope this little essay, if anything, has inspirited you to read whatever your heart desires, it is for me the best past time in the world, and his history of civilization, is unique.

Gruta de Huagapo (The Mother Grotto) A Poem in English and Spanish

((Gruta de Huagapo (Peru))

By Dennis L. Siluk


The Mother Grotto


Massive walls of stone left beautifully from a past age.
Images appear over the slim river, images with a thousand
shadows.

Pivoting, rushing sounds of water, a million gallons
sweep through this endless dirt, rock floor.

One can feel a new unease, deep in the pits of this grotto.

Granite images flutter overhead, death
shadows are coming, hanging
like long knots of wild energy,
they twist in triumph.

Now the time comes to look into the dark-tunnels,
the long past, it scuffles my brain;
I leap down into its nostril,
now, now I climb up with a rope on the other side
to the mouth of the dead,

look inside this dying hollow, my guide holds my hand,(to keep my balance) there is little time for talk,
my wife, and two other companions, wait across the empty pit,
I am, now…inside of its mouth, thinking:
‘…why did God created this?’

In here seasons never change, the pillars of stone,
shapeup like trees,
and the domes overhead, drip ice water, like
leaky teeth…!

Down in the pools of water, fish heads splash,
then jump deeper, their tails swirl, and they hide
in the shallow reeds, foliage, and rocks….

Old Man I say: ‘Grab the moment!’




No: 2045 11-8-07 ((Partly written 3-hours (5:00 PM, in a car) after visiting the largest grotto in South America, Huagapo; the rest of this poem was written when I got home to my apartment, about 7:00 PM, in Huancayo, Peru; the grotto being about 150-miles away.))


((Gruta de Huagapo (Peru))


La Madre Gruta


Enormes paredes de piedra legadas perfectamente de una edad pasada.
Imágenes aparecen sobre el río delgado, imágenes con unas mil
sombras.

Arrollando, sonidos de torrentes de agua, un millón de galones
barre a través de este interminable piso de tierra y rocas.

Se puede sentir una nueva inquietud, honda en los hoyos de esta gruta.

Imágenes de granito se agitan por encima, las sombras
de muerte están viniendo, colgadas
como nudos largos de energía desenfrenada,
ellas se retuercen en triunfo.

Ahora el tiempo viene para examinar los túneles oscuros,
el pasado largo, esto ataca mi cerebro;
salto abajo en las ventanas de su nariz,
ahora, ahora subo arriba con una soga al otro lado
a la boca de los muertos,
miro dentro de este hoyo agonizante, mi guía sostiene mi mano,
(para mantener mi equilibrio) hay poco tiempo para hablar,
mi esposa, y otros dos compañeros, esperan al otro lado del hueco vacío,
estoy, ahora...dentro de su boca, pensando:
“... ¿porqué Dios creó esto?”

¡Aquí las estaciones nunca cambian, los pilares de piedras,
en forma de árboles,
y de los domos por encima, gotean agua helada, como
dientes goteando...!

Abajo en las pozas de agua, cabezas de pescado chapotean,
luego saltan más profundo, sus colas se arremolinan, y ellos se esconden
en las aguas poco profundas, en los follaje, y rocas...

Viejo, digo: “¡Aprovecha el momento!”




# 2045 (8-Noviembre-2007 (Escrito en parte--3 horas—5:00 de la tarde, en un carro) después de visitar la gruta más grande en Sudamérica, Huagapo; el resto de este poema fue escrito cuando llegué a casa a eso de las 7:00 de la noche, en Huancayo, Perú; la gruta estaba aproximadamente a 150 millas de distancia.))

'Day of the Living' (a strange account in Peru, 1959)

(October of 1959)Let me begin by saying that, I have never heard of an account quite like this one, and perhaps you haven’t, only in odd tales, or in hasty and abrupt sketches of weird tales from old magazines, but this tale, or call it an account, has haunted me for 48-years, and now I shall tell it as it happened, believe it or not. I was told in so many words, to let go, the facts, people will not believe you anyhow, so why tell it, why throw your pearls to the swine; well as I said it’s been a very long time since it took place, and it is a story that did not happen to me but to Ezra, my friend, I simply was the witness, and Ezea now is long gone, died some years ago, so what harm can it do.
It was ‘The Day of the Living,’ in Peru, Huancayo, we had all gone to the cemetery, as many do on this holiday, and it is quite normal to see it infested like a hornets nest, and it was. Ezea and I had never been close friends, but this would bring us a tinge closer. He was something of an abstract kid, to say the least, a driving passion for the weird, perhaps that is why I kept my distance, but he was family, I mean, through marriages, a second cousin I think, my mother’s sister’s child, who had a child (Ezea), he was twelve and so was I.
We walked around Ezra’s great-grandmother’s grave; it had a cast-iron spiked fence around it; I saw Ezra stumble in the back of it, a large tree was along side of it, so I couldn’t—at that very moment—see what he was doing, but I know now of course he was picking up something. In the background were the many young boys and girls carrying water buckets to clean the stones for those who had a coin to give, and older boys with ladders to clean the higher stones, and still yet, a few boys with short hoes to do the weeding around the graves. But the fact remains, Ezea had found something, and was trying to hide it, and I wanted to know what it was.
“What is it?” I yelled to Ezea. But he was unanswerable. Next, I started to walk towards him, and he hid behind the tree, the rest of the family (Nancy, Mini, Enrique Senior, and Junior, and Ximena, Daniel and Mary Sofa) were watching the boy cleaning, and weeding. Daniel and Mary Sofa the youngest of us, were posing for a picture, Enrique Senior had gone to the car, I think to get away from the humdrum of things, and Ximena, three for four years older than I was trying her uncles hat on, and Enrique Junior, Ximena´s brother was (a year older than Ximena) was taking it all in. And I, I was the misfit you could say back then, visiting for each October my aunts and uncles in Peru, from Minnesota, while my dad took his Peruvian mother, back to Europe with him, to visit his old Ireland, as he called it. Why October you may be asking, well, I really don’t know, but in Minnesota it is a most beautiful month with all it’s changing of the colors. Anyhow, here I was handsomely bound and decorated with my Peruvian family, like a golden goblin carefully trying to find Ezea, and the reason for his hiding.
I saw, and heard Ezea, actually I interrupted him briskly saying, “What the hick are you doing, talking to that….!”
He said back to me, “I was explaining to her about me!”
He was not utterly ignorant, but talking to a rag doll, dressed in Wanka garb, or traditional garb aroused my interest. In any case, it was worth my while to stay, he added, “I had a wish today, that I could find something dead and make it alive and talk to it. And I found this doll, and it is talking to me.”
I answered that indeed, feeling it was of the utmost importance, refuting his charges that the doll talked, or could talk at all, although I thought I saw its mouth move, but Ezea had it in quite a humiliating position, as he got red in the face, with utmost efforts to persuade me otherwise. Not able to do so, and the doll remaining silent, he thanked me abruptly and took his leave and went behind a large gravestone, a mausoleum if I recall right. In the interim, the rest of the family leaned over the fence and said a long, very long prayer.

I heard Ezea talking to the doll as I hid behind the mausoleum, peeking off and on, picking up, what I could, of a one-way conversation of sorts. And then I heard a whisper, a low vice, feminine saying something. Then all of a sudden, Ezea cried out, fiercely and smashed his clenched fist down on a slap of stone, that was part of the mausoleum, “Listen,” he commanded,” and before he could say another word, I said, “How did you see me behind this tomb?” He replied, “I didn’t, the doll told me you were there, and she saw you peeking!”
The doll was in rages, old dreadful looking textiles, perhaps five-hundred years old. I would have liked to have broken the doll in two pieced at that moment, but then the lips on the doll moved.
“I had made a wish,” said Ezea, and asked the doll, “If this is the day of the living, why do you not live and talk. And then it did.”
Somehow I felt now I was on the track of some kind of real discovery, unless Ezea was pulling my leg and smarter than I had given him credit for, and was telling me a tall tale, while moving the rag doll’s lips. But from the looks of things, he was actually, as vividly as I can describe, actually not doing a thing to the doll, nothing of any kind to make the lips move anyhow, to the best of my knowledge.
“So what happened next?” I asked Ezea.
The doll said, “Ok, wishful thinker, you have your wish, I will talk to you for a day, for I was given but one for my life, just one, then tomorrow, the ‘Day of the Dead’, I shall parish, return from where I came from!”
I mentioned briefly, a curious fan of his now, and spoke skeptically, “How about the doll talking to me?”
“I don’t think the doll has any use for you,” said Ezea. It didn’t make me feel good. My Spanish was not good enough to tell him where to go, you know, in a profound way.

Anyhow the day went on at the cemetery, and the family had a picnic right by the gravestone, Ezea and I ate side by side, and I said nothing, then afterwards we walked about, after that Ezea said to the doll, “Tomorrow no one will believe me that I talked to you.”
I was a foot to his side, searching, I suppose for the living doll to speak; to me it was more of a mummy doll, than a living thing.
We both sat down, and then utterly vague clarifying, the doll spoke, or so I think it did, or someone spoke out of the doll, or for the doll, it said, “It is not easy for one to believe from a distance.” Ezea looked at me, “See,” he said, “you heard the doll!”
Yes, I did, but I didn’t believe it, he did, I didn’t—but I didn’t say I didn’t, lest he tell me to go, or I disrupt the isolated state we both were in, while in this cemetery, and now I was part of it, and I wanted for the moment to remain part of it.
I noticed as we sat there, the weeds grew rank among the graves and trees, almost choking out the grass, and seemingly aging the stones embedded into the ground. I could see the tall walls of the cemetery in the distance, unkempt, bushes over its sides dropping wildly about and down to the soil, then I distinctly heard the doll say, “There is a time to learn, a time to lead and a time to let go, he who has less faith than the other also has less human qualities.”
The doll was not looking at me, but I felt she was talking to me, and I never forgot those words. Ezea believed beyond suspicion, I admit that, I eyed it all suspiciously, but I could never frame it properly, I found myself pacing the ground where Ezea sat, and shaking my head, thinking it would be easier to believe than not, but I lived in a world of facts and not fiction, and dolls do not speak, so that was my world, a science world you might say, yet here I was seeing and hearing and not believing want I was experiencing. As I look back now, it all doesn’t make any sense. I suppose one can say, ‘Why would God, or some other source spend its time on trying to make a nonbeliever a believer, and now that I think of it, Ezea knew this, as did the doll, and the doll proved her point.

I am now sixty-years old, I left Ezea that day, never said a word to a soul about this, lest they think I was crazy, as if my brain was in a little-frequented region of its own, or of some unusually hard basalt, I wanted to be among the normal, or part of the norm, but Ezea always believed, and he didn’t give a hoot, if anyone else believed, and he didn’t waist his breath on trying to persuade anyone to believe, like I would have done if I was him; right to the day he died, right up to the very moment, for I was at his funeral, he believed, and he was buried with his doll, as he had wished to be buried. I asked his wife and children if they knew the story behind the doll, and they said ‘no’ and I said, “Well, someday I will write it…!”That was ten-years ago, now they have it.



Written on the ‘Day of the Living,’ November 2, 2007, in Huancayo, Peru

The Hawthorn Enigma

The Hawthorn Enigma


(The Hawthorn Mystery) In the Custom House of Salem (MA), Nathanial Hawthorn worked during on his book, “The Scarlet Letter” between, 1849-1850; during this period, he signed everything in red. Over the following months, while writing his novel, he wrote an enigma, perhaps because he was frustrated with the Custom House people whom he would call lazy in his 2nd edition, to the book, “The Scarlet Letter,” which was published 30-days later, in a block of 2500-books, the same amount of the 1st edition.
He hid it in a leather bag under the wooden floor of the Custom House, wondering who would find it. But no one did, but in 1957, it showed up, and on the title page of this puzzle of sorts, or conundrum, he wrote “To the finder of this leather pouch, I leave this enigma (for what it is worth, and perhaps to the finder it could be of some value), for I am bored with the people at the Custom House, as lazy as they are, I find it appalling. Should you put the pieces together of this puzzle, you will know how I feel.”
Well, the second sheet of paper (both rolled together) had the enigma on it. It was found in 1957, and shortly after that it was missing again.
It was re-found, in January, of 2007, in the deep vaults of the University of Minnesota. How it got there is still in question, but I was fortunate enough to get it on microfiche. We shall leave all the details of acquiring this out of this so called letter of sorts, and get right down to the official writing; this is how I found the Hawthorn Mystery:



The Enigma

If you find this leather pouch
And untie its leather knot
(that once belonged to me)
What would be unlocked?

(NH)

(Aessaeurtufnviisilebym)

11-2-2007

"Lost Sanctum," No: 2 "Interview with Dennis L. Siluk by Benjamin Szumskylj"

“Lost Sanctum,”
No: 2 (Wild Cat Books)
Ron Hanna, Editor
October, 2006

Interview with Dennis L. Siluk
By Benjamin Szumskyj

Note: Extracts from a Six Page in-depth Interview, the only thoroughly interview ever given to date by the Poet Laureate Dennis L. Siluk.


BS: You are an author in may genres of fiction, as well as writing non-fiction. What made you become an author?

DLS: I have written just about everything, like I’ve just about traveled everywhere. I do not think of genres when I write, I think about the emotions, my moods I am going through, what spirit is activated inside of me that day, and so on. …

What made me become an author? That’s a good question. I was born to be a poet, I feel. …I never had blank periods for ideas or writing, it just a case of not having enough time. I was always traveling or living, or in school, and in the Army…. I did some more short stories in the 90’s but had no time to finish them, so I quit everything in 2001 to finish everything I ever wrote and devote my time to putting everything into the writing.


BS: I’ve always enjoyed reading your horror stories, my favorites being those collected in Death on Demand: Seven Stories of Suspense. What is that appeals you to horror genre?

DLS: Somehow I don’t see it as a horror genre, or hadn’t seen it that way. … Some of my writings were experimental at first and I drew on experience and my imagination to sort it out. The psychology was not hard either: it was already planted in my mind. So it was the vocabulary I worried about, and perhaps that is where all my horror comes from. …I tried to make my images direct. Yet simplicity was important, so I tried to put that into my short stories. ….


BS: The honor genre is ever changing….How do you perceive the genre today?

DLS: I don’t feel I’m aware of it to make any sense of it. I just write it, I never look at it in any direction….


BS: What are some of your favorite horror novels and short stories?


DLS: Everything Edger Allen Poe wrote. I like H.P. Lovecraft, especially “The Dunwich Horror” and many of Clark Ashton Smith’s short stories. Perhaps the best of them all is Bram’s Stoker, form “The Lair of the White Worm” to “Dracula’s Guest”, the lost chapter to Dracula. …

BS: Several of your short stories come under the banner of science fiction and fantasy as well. What is your opinion on the current state of those genres?

DLS: …I don’t know, but Edgar Rice Burroughs is still selling, Jules Verne is still popular, and Greg Bear, a friend of sorts, sells his books of fantasy. I guess it seems to be on kind of a straight road but I think you’d know better than I, Benjamin.


BS: Currently, there seems to be a great interest in fantasy…. Why…?

DLS: Armageddon is getting closer….



BS: You’ve written a great deal of poetry. Who are some of your favorite poets and styles of Poetry?

DLS: George Sterling is a great poet…. Clark Ashton Smith’s a great poet…. Donald Sidney-Fryer’s Atlantean poems are great, while Frank Belenap’s In Mayan Splendor is a sound volume. Robert E. Howard’s Verses in Ebony are great…. Charles Bukowski…. Richard L. Tierney. Ed Sanders’ “Poem from Jail” is a good poem. …James Write, Yuli Daniel, Pablo Neruda, Charles Baudelaire, Georg Trakl, Phillip A. Ellis, Cesar Vallejo and especially Robinson Jeffers.


BS: Of your own poetical works, which do you consider to be your greatest? Why?

DLS: That really is a hard question. It is one someone else needs to answer, to be fair. …

BS: You like to travel, as seen in your travelogues…? What have been some of your favorite countries visited? Where else would you like to travel?

DLS: …I have really enjoyed Peru, Malta, Paris, Mystery Hill in New Hampshire…,Easter Island, Glastonbury in England, Athens, Cambodia, Beijing, Egypt, India…the list goes on and on. Where I’d like to go next: Tibet, The Refrain Circle in Israel…Ethiopia, to the Rock Churches, and to Timbuktu, to check out the old scrolls left over from a thousand years ago….


…deleted question (ref: Perhaps it’s Love and Cold Kindness, two books)


BS: The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon appears to be a pseudotheological work. Are you a religious man and if so, which faith do you follow?

DLS: I am not a very good Christian, but it is where my heart is. Not because I fear the Devil, or the demons in my life, but because of experienced Christ: thus I am a Christian. …I am for Christ, because you have to pick sides: should I pick the losers side, it would be dumb. Should I pick no side, it would be dumber since I know there are two sides, I’m sure the Devil would love that: play ignorant, and hope you’ll clear it up later.


BS: You’re also an artist, when time permits. Is this merely a personal indulgence or an equally serious craft?

DLS: … (I) have always loved art…. It is a love affair, I suppose. …I have used it for my illustrations for my books.



BS: Out of all you’ve written, what are some of your favorites and why?

DLS: I like (the characters of) Arizona Blue and I like the sketches of Old Josh. I love Romancing San Francisco, A Romance in Augsburg and Where the Birds Don’t Sing. …Perhaps my best short-story collection is Death on Demand. …A Path to Sobriety….


…deleted questions of wife, Rosa
…deleted questions on South America


BS: What does the future hold for you as an author? …

DLS: I am not sure what future there is for anybody or me. I am working on nine books at the moment. …

BS: Thank you for your Time Dennis.

DLS: No, thank you!