5 books
A Turkish poet, translator and co-founder of the Garip movement, Orhan Veli Kanık (1914–1950) brought colloquial speech, ordinary people and city life into modern poetry. I Am Listening to Istanbul: Selected Poems of Orhan Veli Kanık reveals how a simple observation can turn through humor, desire or sudden melancholy without adopting an elevated poetic voice. I, Orhan Veli: Poems sharpens the sense of a speaker who is at once intimate, playful and alert to unemployment, appetite and the changing street. His apparent ease is the result of careful subtraction: meter, ornament and inherited prestige give way to timing and spoken rhythm. Istanbul remains vivid not as a monumental backdrop but as sound, weather, hunger and movement. I Am Listening to Istanbul offers the broader selection, while I, Orhan Veli: Poems foregrounds the distinctive personality of his voice.
