ISBN 921870-45-0   6 x 9 134 pp, $14.95 Poetry

In this collection of poems written in English and French parallel versions, Inge Israel evokes the life and work of Russian-born painter Chaim Soutine. Living and starving alongside his artist friends Modigliani, Chagall, Lipschitz and others on the Left Bank in the 1920s, Soutine was acclaimed by them as the expressionist par excellence. These poems penetrate his haunting yet strangely life-affirming work, reflecting the wildness, ecstacy and despair of the human condition.

Included are eight colour reproductions of Soutine's paintings.

"Now formally witty and unsentimental; now thick with the accents of the lost shtetls of eastern Europe; now dark as misery — these poems come at the reader as though they have been dipped in the same pools of colour as Soutine's paintings." — Don Coles

"Inge Israel's recreation of the life and art of Soutine reminds me of what was once said of Brahms' music: 'it is like a dark well, the more deeply we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back.'"
— Toni Onley

The winner of numerous prizes for her poetry and short story collections, Inge Israel lived for many years in Edmonton. She has recently moved to Victoria. This is her seventh book.