Customer Reviews

I, Orhan Veli

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"What we have not done/for our mother/land/ some of us died/some of us gave speeches."

Incredible simplicity, one line tells more than entire books. Read each poem easily and quickly and think about it for years.

Orhan Veli is among the greatest poets of the Turkish literature on a par with Nazim Hikmet and Melih Cevdet. It is rare that the true feeling of a poem remains after undergoing even the most professional translation. Besides, the skill is in meaning the most with the simplest words possible. The simplicity of his language makes his poems as genuine and majestic as it is in its native language.

I try to buy turkish poetry books to my english speaking friends and usually end up with nothing. This translation is no different. The phonetics of the poems have been totally ruined and the meaning of words in-the-sake-of-maintaining simplicity have been diminished drastically. I would strongly not recommend this version as the reader will obviously be mislead and hope for a better one to be published in future.

This a great book to start the adventure of contemporary Turkish Literature, which is still not in translation that much...
Orhan Veli's poems are special because they were the poems that broke free from the sylistics of his predecessors and contemporaries, his sense of sarcasm, love for Istanbul and sincere lines make it worth reading...

..that's the word Orhan Veli has always used to describe himself. It means "weird", "different", "sad".. And that's all what I want to say about this book really. I certainly enjoyed reading his poems translated into English however, I also had the chance to read them in their original. If you'd like to surprise your friends (or yourself) with a bit of "GARIP" poetry, then I'm sure you'll like Orhan Veli.