Seyhan Erozçelik, Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds
translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat.
ISBN: 978-1-58498-073-5, paper, $14.95
Seyhan Erozçelik’s Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds, originally published in Turkish as Gül ve Telve, is one of the major works of Turkish poetry in the last twenty years. In it, two strands of the Turkish culture and history come together. The “Telve” section, which consists of twenty-four coffee grounds readings, spins a Shamanistic yarn of hope and desire going back to Central Asian animistic traditions and bringing their language to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The “Gül” section, which also consists of twenty-four poems, creates stunning variations around the image of the rose -- a central image in Islam and in Sufism -- mirroring the “Telve”section, the two parts together making a poetent, poetic statement.
Seyhan Erözçelik was born in 1962 in the Black Sea region of Turkey. He studied psychology at the University of the Bosphorus and oriental languages at Istanbul University. In 1986, he His first poem was published in 1982, followed by a number of collections. He has also written poems in his native dialect and in other Turkic languages, and has brought a modern approach to to the classical Ottoman rhyme, aru. He translated the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and C. P. Cavafy
into Turkish.
Poet, translator, and essayist, Murat Nemet-Nejat edited and largely translated Eda: A Contemporary Anthology of Turkish
Poetry (Talisman, 2004) He translated Orhan Veli, I, Orhan Veli (1989) and Ece Ayhan, A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (1997). He is the author of The Peripheral Space of Photography (2004) and The Spiritual Life of Replicants (Talisman, 2012).
"Here lies the stunning originality of Erözçelik’s poetry. Within the Turkish context, it breaks away from the İkinci Yeni (the Second New) poets of the 1950s, who are arguably the most widely read poets in Turkey today. The Second New eliminates metaphor as a unit of poetry, relying on obsessive uses of imagery that often turn the poetry into a manic kaleidoscopic display of striking, often semantically ambivalent sets of words. Its impact is to reveal what is politically suppressed and sexually forbidden.[4] In the sensual-visual sense, images are rare in Erözçelik’s poetry. Images (words) are basically spiritual ideograms that visually move across the page continuously arranging and rearranging themselves. They form dynamic poems of ideas — thought as words and words as thought — as the title of this poem indicates, reminiscent of film. "Within the wider framework of poetry in general, Erözçelik creates a poetry of ideas where word is plugged into spirit, through the eye and the ear, creating an inextricable whole, reminiscent of the dynamic motions in film. He is one of the precursors of a spiritual language in poetry derived from film language" --Efe Murad, Jacket2
"Expertly translated." -- Midwest Book Review
ISBN: 978-1-58498-073-5, paper, $14.95
Seyhan Erozçelik’s Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds, originally published in Turkish as Gül ve Telve, is one of the major works of Turkish poetry in the last twenty years. In it, two strands of the Turkish culture and history come together. The “Telve” section, which consists of twenty-four coffee grounds readings, spins a Shamanistic yarn of hope and desire going back to Central Asian animistic traditions and bringing their language to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The “Gül” section, which also consists of twenty-four poems, creates stunning variations around the image of the rose -- a central image in Islam and in Sufism -- mirroring the “Telve”section, the two parts together making a poetent, poetic statement.
Seyhan Erözçelik was born in 1962 in the Black Sea region of Turkey. He studied psychology at the University of the Bosphorus and oriental languages at Istanbul University. In 1986, he His first poem was published in 1982, followed by a number of collections. He has also written poems in his native dialect and in other Turkic languages, and has brought a modern approach to to the classical Ottoman rhyme, aru. He translated the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and C. P. Cavafy
into Turkish.
Poet, translator, and essayist, Murat Nemet-Nejat edited and largely translated Eda: A Contemporary Anthology of Turkish
Poetry (Talisman, 2004) He translated Orhan Veli, I, Orhan Veli (1989) and Ece Ayhan, A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (1997). He is the author of The Peripheral Space of Photography (2004) and The Spiritual Life of Replicants (Talisman, 2012).
"Here lies the stunning originality of Erözçelik’s poetry. Within the Turkish context, it breaks away from the İkinci Yeni (the Second New) poets of the 1950s, who are arguably the most widely read poets in Turkey today. The Second New eliminates metaphor as a unit of poetry, relying on obsessive uses of imagery that often turn the poetry into a manic kaleidoscopic display of striking, often semantically ambivalent sets of words. Its impact is to reveal what is politically suppressed and sexually forbidden.[4] In the sensual-visual sense, images are rare in Erözçelik’s poetry. Images (words) are basically spiritual ideograms that visually move across the page continuously arranging and rearranging themselves. They form dynamic poems of ideas — thought as words and words as thought — as the title of this poem indicates, reminiscent of film. "Within the wider framework of poetry in general, Erözçelik creates a poetry of ideas where word is plugged into spirit, through the eye and the ear, creating an inextricable whole, reminiscent of the dynamic motions in film. He is one of the precursors of a spiritual language in poetry derived from film language" --Efe Murad, Jacket2
"Expertly translated." -- Midwest Book Review