A novella in the ancient Sufi tradition of storytelling, The Stradivarius Poems adopts a contemporary form to lament the fragile nature of human love. In this touching story looking deeply at the human condition, we are also given a somewhat ironic study of the illusory comfort we occasionally search for in the arts themselves.

The narrative unfolds with a certain mystery through the eyes of Ilya Firkin, a painter whose love for his former wife Laura, lost to him twice, once in divorce and once in death, keeps him hovering on a critically delicate point of balance in his sorrow.

The concluding section of weeping lyrics, which gives the book its title, tells one side of the story, yet there is a final stoic nobility in Ilya's labored reconciliation with his years of haunting grief. This brief tale of love and death all wrapped up in the arts will resonate sympathetically for everyone who has ever, like Ilya, loved and lost.