Contemporary Turkish Poetry Mehmet Nuri Parmaksiz

CONTEMPORARY TURKISH POETRY




Mehmet Nuri Parmaksiz


A Light in the Darkness



Baku – 2017
 

Translated and compiled
by Dr. Kamran Nazirli
Member of the Union of Azerbaijani Writers





Copyright 2017 Translation into English. Mehmet Nuri Parmaksiz.
 A Collection of Poems. Contemporary Turkish Poetry. Baku. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, without permission.


Note: This Book has been published in the framework of the Translator’s Project "Contemporary Turkish Poetry in English". The Project Manager would like to hope sincerely that those who use this book can have a clearer view of the Turkish poetic mentality.


@Mehmet Nuri Parmaksiz, Selected Poems. A Light in the Darkness. Translation into English, Mutarjim Publishing House 2017
All rights reserved

Publisher: Alish Mirzally
Cover design by Matanat Garakhanli



Printed in Baku, Azerbaijan, 2017
 
Introductory notes
or a few words on Mehmet Nuri"s verses
 
Dear English speaking readers!
This book aims at acquainting English speaking people with one of the talented representatives of the contemporary poetry of the Turkish literature Mehmet Nuri Parmaksiz. It will also be helpful to all those interested in modern Turkish verse in English. Having in mind these two classes of readers, I selected the best poems of the author and put together the notes and commentaries, making the latter as informative as possible. All the poems included in this book named A Light in the Darkness written by the author in different years.

According to the Project of Contemporary Turkish Poetry in English the book contains 33 poems. I aimed at selecting those poems which are generally considered to be good and presenting special interest, either because they are typical of a peculiar time or new literary lines, or they appear to have exercised an influence.

What is the essence of this book? And why we called it A Light in the Darkness?
The essence of this book is summed up in the following  verse:

My spirit - neither understands nor sees...
It will get excited by Love to God,
I am dead by Eshk,
I am royal of love, my Beloved!
It is me who turned into You litle by litle
and feels jealous to Tawhid,
My soul will reduce to ruins because of your torment,
My spirit - neither understands a word nor sees...

So the book can be summed up in one or two words -
Love to God! Yes, love of God is more than the daily comforts. Your own light within you should be Love to God! The author is resigned to the seeming futility of life. Having said this, the book raises as many questions as any book devoted to this great Love.

I would like to mention it spesifically: the poems introduced to you are mostly sufistic, in other words, they imply that the ideal before an individual should be to be one with God. For the attainment of this ideal, intense devotion for God is needed in the individual. Devotion is reflected in love.

So Mehmet Nuri"s poetry is considered to be a new page for the contemporary Turkish literature, because of its sufistic features. The general theme of Mehmet's book, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian and Turkish  literature, is that of tawhid — union with the Beloved, from whom he sees himself as being cut off and aloof. His longing and spiritual desire to attain it is evident in the majority of the poems included to this book.

I think, it is a poetry, and the Eastern mystics are never tired of expatiating on the "Eshq" or "love of God," which is the one distinguishing features of Sufi mysticism. The Masnavi, which teaches in the sweetest strains that all nature abounds with love divine, that causes even the lowest plant to seek the sublime object of its desire.