Two years ago, Edgar Silex entered a poetry "slam," a mock poetry tournament, at the Telltale Hearth and Grill in Baltimore. He won this "battle of the poets" and earned some admirers, including Sharon Campbell Snyder, one of his competitors that night.
"I never forgot what I heard there," says Ms. Snyder, a student of creative writing and literature at Carroll Community College and a friend of Mr. Silex's. "It was poetry which was very, very self-effacing. Painfully so. It was something that left an impression on me."
Ms. Snyder was granted funding recently by the student government association to invite the 36-year-old Native American poet to the college. He will recite his verse at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Great Hall, joined by classical guitarist and flutist John Guinta.
Mr. Silex's poetry offers a poignant look at the decline of Native American culture throughout this century. His characters possess a stoicism that brings a highly emotional quality to his work.
The theme of Indians as a people displaced is explored in many of his poems, including "Blue Cloud Rides Horses," "Metis Medicine Blanket" and "Grandfather Buffalo."
Mr. Silex uses no punctuation in his poetry; spaces between words and phrases are used to create the rhythm, which Ms. Snyder says has tribal overtones.
That and his use of repetition make his poems moving, she says.
"[He] creates a rhythm that is reminiscent of Native American ceremonies," she says. "It gives the illusion of the dance and the drums. It works with his poetry, because of the Native American influence."
Mr. Silex, a Pueblo, is multilingual. Born and reared in El Paso, Texas, he recalls listening to Spanish poets on a Mexican radio station as a boy. His grandmother regularly tuned in the program and instilled in her grandson an early appreciation for the medium.
He says Indian issues are important to him but are not his only concern. "People tend to remember the fact that I'm native, but a lot of my poems have nothing to do with nativeness. They [the poems] tend to be about more personal issues, which are universal," he says.
This year, Mr. Silex received a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship. He has applied a portion of that grant to the Baltimore Literary Center, which he established 1993. As its director, he conducts advanced poetry seminars and writing workshops for local writers. Area cafes and restaurants serve as meeting grounds for the fledgling organization.
An associate editor of the journal GYST, Mr. Silex has done readings at the Halcyon Gallery and Irina's Cafe, both in Baltimore.
In April, he will join three other local poets in a program of readings organized by the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society.
Billed as the Poetry Quartet, the group will tour private schools in Howard County and will appear at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup.
The other participants are Michael Collier and Elaine Upton, professors at the University of Maryland College Park, and Cathy Magnan, a professor at Western Maryland College.
Mr. Silex is the author of two collections of poetry, "Even the Dead Have Memories" and "Through All the Displacements."
Although he has been published in local literary publications, he does not actively seek such exposure.
"If you seek to get published, almost anyone will publish you. But if you are a serious writer, getting published is not as important as the quality and value of the word," he says.