Two Swan Songs

Both Sylvia Plath and Nilgun Marmara made their statements in life and in their poetry. Plath wrote for about seven years (1956-1963) and gassed herself on February 11, aged 30. Marmara wrote for ten years (1977-87) and decided to end her life on October 13, 1987, aged 29. Plath’s and Marmara’s lives and...

A Distinctive Kind of Literature from Barış Bıçakçı

The latest book of Barış Bıçakçı, a writer mostly celebrated for his distinctive texts, entitled After Going Parallel to the Ground for a While (Bir Süre Yere Paralel Gittikten Sonra, 2008) possesses an even greater literary tour de force and effectiveness than that of his previous writings, i.e. As...

Mapping the ‘İkinci Yeni’

The maps of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth demonstrate a remarkable fealty to the fictional world they depict. And yet they are fictions. They are also astonishing visual manifestations of Tolkien’s fetish for facts. My understanding of the İkinci Yeni (meaning literally, the Second New) perpetuates its...

I Forgot the Words, But I Knew the Substance

HURUFI POEMS (Hurufî Şiirler) by Hilmi Yavuz YKY, 58 pp., 2005, ISBN: 978-975-08-0890-6 From the article… No east can deny its west; no modernity can be built without tradition. Hilmi Yavuz calls it ‘accuracy’ and defines the accuracy as the shared identity between the poet and his/her...

In the Corridors of Language and Literature with Tahsin Yücel

From the interview…. You have written some of your books in French. One of those books, Coordonnées Narratives was later published in Turkish as well with your own translation. In the foreword of the Turkish translation, you say, ‘I could never answer the question that, If I had written this book in...

The Lale Müldür: Unleashed Poetry of a Released Woman

BIZANSIYYA by Lale Müldür YKY, 163 pp., 2007, ISBN: 978-975-08-1188-3 HOURS/DEERS (Saatler/Geyikler) by Lale Müldür YKY, 153 pp., 2002, ISBN: 978-975-08-0286-7 ULTRA ZONE (Ultra-Zone’da Ultrason) by Lale Müldür YKY, 244 pp., 2006, ISBN: 978-975-08-1078-7 From the article… Is the signifier of...