COVER ILLUSTRATION: Detail of Nizamî. Hamse,
Topkapi Palace Museum, Hazine 760, fol. 246b. By permission.
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Ottoman Lyric Poetry
AN ANTHOLOGY
by
Walter G. Andrews * Najaat Black * Mehmet
Kalpakli
University of Washington Press
"This is the finest literary translation of Ottoman Turkish lyrics ever
done and will shape the reception of the poetry from now on. The
selection is excellent -- aesthetically superior, historically
representative, and stylistically coherent."
VICTORIA HOLBROOK, Associate Professor of Turkish, Ohio State
University.
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Like a treasure-filled storehouse to which we have lost the key,
Ottoman lyric poetry is almost unknown today, particularly among
Western readers. Yet, during the centuries in which the Ottoman Empire
was one of the world's great powers, poetry was its central medium of
cultural expression. From love to the most profound search for
spiritual truth to impassioned pleas for employement or largesse,
everything that touched people deeply was expressed in poetry.
This anthology, the first major English translation of Ottoman poetry
in nearly a century, unlocks the storehouse. The authors offer free
verse translations of 75 lyric poems (whose original Ottoman Turkish
texts are also included), spanning a period from the fourteenth
through the early twentieth centuries.
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In addition to the poems, the authors provide concise background
information on Ottoman history and literature, informative notes to
the poems, and brief biographies of the poets. These materials give
students and general readers sufficient context to understand the
poems, without burdening the reading experience.
Walter G. Andrews is retired from the Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington, Najaat
Black is a poet and fiction writer. Mehmet Kalpakli teaches at Mimar
Sinan University in Istanbul.
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