Legislator Poets
Translated from the Turkish
by Mevlut Ceylan
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Mehmet Atilla Maras
--
Poet and writer (b. 1 July 1949, Urfa). He
attended Cumhuriyet Primary School (1959),
the elementary grade of the Institute of
Arts for Boy's (1963), Urfa High School
(1966), and graduated from Erzurum Atatürk
University, Faculty of Agriculture,
Department of Agricultural Economics (1971).
He taught agriculture at Aksu Teacher
Training College for some time (1972-74).
Later on, he served as a civil engineer at
Adana State Hydraulic Works (1974-77), head
of the branch offices of the Turkish
Agricultural Supply Department in Urfa,
Eskişehir and Balıkesir (1978-96), assistant
manager (1996-98) and member of the
executive committee of the Turkish
Agricultural Supply Department. |
He officially retired and from 1998 to 2000, he worked
as the Chairman of the Writers Union of Turkey. He has
been acknowledged with an honorary doctorate of
literature by the World Academy of Culture and Arts. He
was elected as the Şanlıurfa parliamentary deputy for
the Justice and Development Party at the national
elections held on 3 November 2003.
His first poem Eski Kent (Old City) was published in the
newspaper Şafak (Urfa, 1966). Later, he published his
poems and articles in the reviews Balıklı Göl (Urfa,
1966), Harran (Urfa, 1979), where he was a member of the
editorial board and head of the editorial department and
in Adımlar (Erzurum, 1970-72), Fikir ve Sanatta Hareket
(1970-75), Mavera (1976-80), Edebiyat (1970-75) and
Dergâh (1990), as well as in newspapers such as Yeni
Devir, Zaman, and Yeni Şafak. In 1981, he collected the
Writers Union of Turkey Poetry Award with Şehrayin
(Illuminations) and in 1992 in India, the Madras
Outstanding Poet Award.
The same year he was acknowledged with an honorary
doctorate of literature by the California Academy of Art
and Culture. He participated in the Struga (Yugoslavia)
Poetry Evenings in 1989, in the Kuala Lumpur Poetry
Reading Festival in 1990, the International Turkish
Poetry Festival in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) and in Almaty
(Kazakhstan) in 1993. His poem Aney (Mom), which was
very popular among young people was set to music,
recorded by famous artists and filmed on video.
WORKS:
POETRY: Doğudan Batıdan Ortadoğudan (From the
East, the West and the Middle East, 1976), Şehrayin
(Illuminations 1981), Aney (Mom, 1983), Zor Sözler
(Difficult Words, 1989), Childhood Dreams (poems
translated into English, 1991), Merhaba Ey Hüzün (Hello
O Grief, 1996), Künyemize Aşk Yazıldı (Love is Written
on Our Identity Discs, 1997).
RESEARCH: Peygamberler Şehri Şanlıurfa (Şanlıurfa,
City of Prophets, 1986).
ESSAY: Beyaz Adamın Kutusu (White Man’s Box,
2001).
| The Architect
Oh Sinan
you're the holy architect of eternity
you're the minaret
elegant, deep and faithful
you're the fountain of ablutions
you're the dove
you're the limpid river
you're the coolness of stones
you're the architect
Mehmet Atilla Mara (1949-) |
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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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)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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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
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 9 March 2006
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