|
Flowering Sky
By Arif Ay
Poems
Translated by Mevlut Ceylan
Arif Ay born in 1952. One of the most influential poets of his
generation published nine collections. Revolutionary themes lie
at the heart of his inspiration. Also written short stories, and
articles on literature and politics. Graduated from Ankara
University where he read Turkish Literature and Islamic Theology. The
author of numerous short stories, he graphically describes the
poverty of the common man in Turkey. His prose is informed by
the same lyrical fervour as marks his verse.
Introduction
Arif Ay's first book bears the title HIRA.
The name is significant; Hira is the name of the cave where The
Prophet Muhammad first received a revelation. Ay sees the poetic
role as closely paralleling the prophetic: both prophet and poet
exemplify the vates. This essentially religious vision of the
poet's place in society pervades all his work and helps explain
the unpoetic title of his second collection: Dosyalar
(dossiers). A dossier is a file the secret police keeps on a
person, particularly if he be a dissident.
Ay dissents from the received view of Turkish history
as imparted by state organs and institutions; he views with
dismay the collapse of national institutions following the first
World War, when they were replaced with institutions on the
western model. In his verse he laments the passing of a culture
and its replacement with a wasteland of the spirit; but his work
with its appeal to the youth who flock to his readings in
Ankara, makes Yevtushenko seem a closer analogue than Eliot. The
secret of his appeal lies not only in his scorn for the
conventional hypocrisy (as seen in Ramp included in the present selection) but in the directness of his
voice, sometimes compared to a clenched fist in its relentless
ambiguity.
He writes in vers
libre which became fashionable in Turkey from the '40s
onward, using modern methods to indite modernism. His most
recent collection iirin Kandilleri (Candles of Poetry) uses the same metric
form as the previous collections. Critics hailed it as his most
mature work, establishing him as a major figure amongst
contemporary poets.
His voice cries aloud, the tone bitter. He stigmatises
the hypocrisy that is so much a part of the social scene,
ironically counsels himself to sleep:
|
sleep, sleep, go to bed and sleep
that's what they taught you
on your first day at school |
The cash nexus, with its all-pervasive materialism, is
seen as having sapped the moral values underpinning the Turkish
spirit. A nation cut off from its spiritual roots (the forgotten
alphabet refers to Arabic, the language of the Qur'an)
ultimately faces extinction, this long sleep which the somnolent
system state education anticipates.
Time,
a haiku, expresses the poet's sense of futility. Another
haikuesque piece, Horses,
conveys with epigrammatic concision a meaning not immediately
apparent to a non-Turk. The Turks were a race of hardy horsemen
out of Central Asia: the horse is for them a symbol of what they
were when they formed the vanguard of Islam. Such a horse,
divinely appointed or assigned, is riderless because he is the
vehicle of faith itself, of the supernatural truth of Islam.
Horses amount to a repetitive, almost obsessive image. In Ostlers
the nostalgia for a remote Turko-Islamic past causes the poet to
imagine himself dead:
|
like a flowering sky
the night rises over my skull |
His poetry is affirmative as well as destructive. And Labour,
with its echoes of Horace, replaces the Latin poet's faith in
the poetic faculty with a religious faith in the eternal edifice
of supernatural, religious truth. In the Qur'an the believer is
referred to as a labourer, who labours in the vineyard of the
Lord. God said:
|
And their Lord accepted (their prayers):
“Never will I suffer to be lost the work
of any of you, whether male or female;
you are (the offspring) of one another.
So those who emigrated, and were expelled
from their homes, and suffered harm in
My cause, and fought and were slain, assuredly,
I will remit from them their sins, and admit them
into gardens beneath which rivers flow; a reward
from Allah, and with Allah is the best of
rewards.”
(Qur'an'_ Kerim, 3:195) |
Ay's
popularity rests in part on his skill in love poetry. Asking is
included here as an example of this genre, showing another side
of Ay's inspiration.
A gentler mood suffuses his verse at these moments.
Mevlut Ceylan, London / © Mevlut Ceylan
Translated by Mevlut Ceylan
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * *
* *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
|
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 30 October 2011
|
