Fazil Husnu Daglarca

Poet
b., 1914, Istanbul

One of the Turkey's most prolific and frequently translated contemporary
poets, Fazil Husnu Daglarca received a military education but began
publishing poetry while still in middle school. His poem ``Yavaslayan
Omur'' (Slowing Life) brought him to the attention of the reading public
in 1933. As a career officer he lived in various parts of the country
until his resignation from the army in 1950, afte which he worked in the
Directorate of Press and Tourism and then in the Ministry of Labor for
another ten years. He spent some time in France in 1952. Together with a
friend he founded ``Kitap (Book)'' Bookstore and Publications in Istanbul
which he managed until 1970. Since then he has concentrated on writing
poetry.

Daglarca was selected as ``the best Turksih poet'' by the International 
Poetry Forum meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1967 and received
a golden wreath in August, 1974 at the Thirteenth Struga, Yugoslavia,
Poetry Festival. If Daglarca sometimes neglects the refinements of image
or form, his verse is generally accepted as some of the most vigorous
Turkish poetry of the mid-twentieth century. If Daglarca constitutes,
in the words of critic Dogan Hizlan, ``a school unto himself,'' his 
patriotic themes are firmly bound to Turkish nationalism:

     We are Turks, Ataturkists, free from earth to heaven
     It's crystal clear, the sea is ours, the soil, the sky,
     Anew we'll build the mountain, stones, the plains
     Our heart, which beating says, `modern civilization.'

Daglarca's delibarate use of assonances, reinforcement of concepts
by repetition and a mixture of the literary ``purified language''
with the spoken tongue have been admirably conveyed in a number of
English translations. But Fazil Husnu Daglarca is not all driving 
rhythms and strident themes:

      I draw my world in the air with a flower
      And look with wonder at this dreamlike form.



from Comtemporary Turkish Writers - A Critical Bio-Bibliography
Louis Mitler - Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, 1988.
p. 79-81.