The Daily Glance: Nemet-Nejat

Murat Nemet-Nejat's edited collection Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry is full of poetry that I have never read before but that is fascinating.  It contains poetry by some better known poets like Hikmet and Veli, and it has has some essays on Turkish poetry that shed like for those of us who are uninitiated. The real joy of the book is getting to meet the work of some many poets whose works are not easily available in English.  I had never read Mustafa Ziyalan or Seyhan Erozcelik, but both will be high on my reading list now.   Essentially, it seems like Nemet-Nejat has opened up Turkish poetry to a new world of English readers, and the glimpse he give us is mesmerizing.