Red Studio

In a transformation as surprising as it is persuasive, Matisse's famed painting, The Red Studio becomes the red studio of the heart in Murray Silverstein's superb third collection. There's room in this studio for loss, doubt, and humor. But above all, there's room for love--love for family, for learning, for life. Silverstein's voice is masterly without being imperious, inquiring without being coy, and generous in its acceptance of human limits. Whether addressing the dead or a yellow colander in his kitchen, emptiness or the moon, Keats or a fallen fig tree, Silverstein shifts his perspective from his family to the world, from his love for language to his love for the arts. His tone shifts, too, from the colloquial to the formal, as easily and naturally as the next breath. Silverstein opens his book with the appeal: "lash me to love, music of my late years, against the spectre of its vanishing, lash me to love--" His appeal is granted. These are poems of love from a heart unafraid to admit life in all its pain and beauty.