The Stradivarius Poems Explores a Simple Mystery Which Takes Readers Into the Heart of a Good Man's Sorrow

In this glowing novella, Sharon Marcus gives readers a contemporary example of the ancient Sufi storytelling tradition inviting them to look at extremes, both the ups and downs of the heart as well as the illusory comfort they search for in the performance art of their lives.

(PRWEB) October 18, 2008 -- In this glowing novella, Sharon Marcus gives readers a contemporary example of the ancient Sufi storytelling tradition inviting them to look at extremes, both the ups and downs of the heart as well as the illusory comfort they search for in the performance art of their lives.

Ilya Firkin is an artist, a painter living in Philadelphia whose attachment to his work, his art, is eclipsed by a dual sense of loss, first in divorce and then in death. The Laura who was his wife shares center stage with him in this mystical examination of the struggle to be reconciled with the beauty and misery of the human condition

Ilya's four year retreat from life to contemplate the pain and the joy of our earthly existence is lit up by remembrance of scenes from Laura's past and his own. The Laura who was his wife imperceptibly merges with that other Laura, his all but imagined symbol of Petrarchan inaccessibility, whose own grief culminates in the coda of brief, weeping lyrics concluding the story.

The four years of Ilya Firkin's compelling meditation on life, love, art and death create the canvas, a painting to study line and color, the instruments of examination transforming Ilya, moving him from each bleak plane of suffering to eloquent heights of realization.

A story thoughtfully and skillfully told, beautifully written, The Stradivarius Poems speaks directly to anyone with a deep longing to understand the towering strength and the infinite fragility of the human experience.

The Stradivarius Poems
by Sharon Marcus
The Sufi Press
ISBN: 9780973753462
$28.95

Date of Publication:
September 20, 2008

Distributed by:
White Knight Books (Canada)
Hushion House (USA)

For more information visit: www.sufipress.com

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