Edip Cansever

Edip Cansever [IPA|eˡd̪ip ˡʤan.sevɛɾ] (August 8 1928 – May 28 1986) was a Turkish poet.

Biography

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Cansever attended Trade Academy for some time, and worked as an antiquity salesman in Grand Bazaar, Istanbul. Despite his denial, he is considered to be a member of second new generation:

Works

* İkindi Üstü (1947)
* Dirlik Düzenlik (1954)
* Yerçekimli Karanfil (1957)
* Umutsuzlar Parkı (1958)
* Petrol (1959)
* Nerde Antigone (1961)
* Tragedyalar (1974)
* Çağrılmayan Yakup (1966)
* Kirli Ağustos (1970)
* Sonrası Kalır (1964)
* Ben Ruhi Bey Nasılım (1976)
* Sevda ile Sezgi (1977)
* Şairin Seyir Defteri (1980)
* Yeniden (Collected Poems, 1981)
* Bezik Oynayan Kadınlar (1982)
* İlkyaz Şikayetçileri (1984)
* Oteller Kenti (1985)

Awards

* Yeditepe Poetry Awards (1958)
* Turkish Language Association Poetry Awards (1977)
* Sedat Simavi Literary Awards (1982)

ome of his poems

EYES

It seems nothing can provoke
Our inner silence
No sound no word nothing
The eyes bring out the eyes!

Nothing else but this unites us
A leaf touching another leaf
So close and so docile
The hands bring out the hands!

In our age love is an opposition
Let us unite to cast two single shadows...

TRAGEDIES

CHORUS

Since they are crumbling, turn on the radio,
The streets, dogs, god's all assets

EPISODE

Loosens out of our hands, spills out everything
We stop, like blood, frozen in a hymn
With sounds and broken nails
Freezes our madness, captains are at no ship,
None, since seas are enormous, dead ones large
A chilly moon is heard, cold
In solitude. Loneliness is the season,
Where ``flowers themselves bunch up."
And times are at each other's throats, each thicker
Than the other
Running
Tea times crack, memories relic,
Seep up dead bodies over white tables
And billiard tables, pale, disappear
And sunglasses are worn again
The pen squeaks stop, telephones are silent, the last stamps
Are glued,
Some things are missing, gentle, copper rust.

CHORUS

We who are remnants of a fall, we are men, women,
Stuffed deer, frightened, flow out.

EPISODE

And our half warmed fright remains; the sky is creatured
Of neglect,
Sips its drink, stretches back
In its own glass,
A corpse, both deathless and dead; for it
A mere novelty, irresolute in its freedom, alone
An embalmed tale,
This corpse.
An there is another not dead,
Because if something like this is needed among us,
It weakends our exile.

From one to another what can move in these times?

CHORUS

When the fright moves for a loss: something
Darkening its waters slowly into a stone among us,
A lexicon of silence.

EPISODE

It is that thing, a bit of hate and
Petrified hair, both petrified in those flower shaped
Of rocks-dark-painted,
Hate
Painless, endless, all of love in one.
That day of sudden disappearance without good, without suitcases,
Shadowy, but in that completely labyrinthe stop
With chilly hormones
One beauty topping one more beautiful than a third, but all understanding
Flying,Daly newspapers bulging with street screams,
All fished out of the same heart, tired,
disnatured, lazy, after long
Comings and goings, and cracked nails,
An image we built suddenly, a myth
That binds us whole in its laws.

CHORUS

We are dead. Dead ones gather themselves here.
Age thickens, tenses up, systems get prepared.
The bloody hours fall, the markets remain.

EPISODE

Blood. Generated of pain, blood of the obstinate what,
And cold
At those hours when our throats change tunes,
Those hours when things remain, things inside us
Remain the same, and insects, worriless,
Change spots; at those hours to become a little
Something
Some blood!
And numberless gestures meet with their muds,
In succession, carings and defeats
And everything, suddenly everything,
Years, cold wishes, hell without fires
In those days of death in those undecorated rituals
Blood rises in piazzas
Victorious.

CHORUS

This blood,
The most elementary lesson of birth and decay.

EPISODE

Whereas appearing, one day, palmless and without suitcases,
Shadowy, but in that completely labyrinthe stop,
All days, uneventful, tickets going to numberless spots:
Counters, cold
Waters and sunglasses,
Slipping in tremor,
Slipping, unknowingly, and without finally caring,
Rid of dimensions, thinnings, helpless like a deer,A stuffed deer, stumbling and shy, in drinks
In drinks,
Building, among leaves opening newly,
Building its love of nest and indifference.

CHORUS

We are unmade, and our lot is unmade. We just wear
Now, the unmourningclothing of you.

HEAD OF CHORUS

We all have remained gods. No one should pretend
Gladness.

* Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat

MEDUSA

Deep, silent, good as it is
Autumn; birds leaving their deads
In our country for sorrow there is left no place
Deep, silent, good as it is
At noon, twilight glances

Now our glooms is a meeting place
We are that pale, that lonely, that exiled medusas
We slip away by hanging our words
Our country, our land, our everything
Cloudy rakis at the edge of the glasses

We draw the world with indifferent foots
Our faces fall down as a rain’s heaviness
Then without realizing how quickly end the drinks
The more we speak, the more silence it becomes
We ask one of us our name, he tells us his

*Translated by Coskun Tuncer
Edip Cansever

ee also

* List of contemporary Turkish poets
* Objective correlative

References

* Ahmet Necdet, "Modern Turk Siiri Yonelimler, Tanikliklar, Ornekler", Broy Publishing, October 1993.
* Poems translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, [http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/poetry/poems/edip_cansever/english/from_tragedies Some of his Poems]

External links

*http://www.thesis.bilkent.edu.tr/0002273.pdf