Doğa Şiirleri

The book opens with a foreword by Nazar Büyüm. The compilers say that a nature poem and a poem written for nature are not the same thing: poets used nature as the language of love, longing, loneliness, freedom and hope, because the poet's atmosphere is the world of nature and of people. They also show the yardstick of the selection: Nâzım Hikmet's poem about snow is in because the whole poem carries a nature air, while a single line by another poet was left out because it did not make a nature poem.

The first group are the symbolist voices of the older generation. In «Sea Song» and «Open Sea», Yahya Kemal Beyatlı gives a person sailing toward the horizon, a longing for the Balkans of childhood and the sea as a «thousand-headed dragon»; in «Night Composition» a bird sings only on spring nights. In «Staircase», «Forest», «Tree» and «Desire at the End of a Day» Ahmet Haşim offers evening colours, yellow leaves and a desire to become a reed by the pond; the book glosses the old words under each poem. In Tanpınar's «Everything in Its Place», house, garden and a sleeping beloved join in a calm, timeless picture.

The largest section is Nâzım Hikmet's. «Longing» gives the wish to return to the sea; «On the Sea» an encounter with the sea on a train journey and a wish to lie in a pine-wood coffin on an Anatolian plateau. Two extracts from «Human Landscapes from My Country» show the steppe, a woman with her baby, a fox and Halil looking at the sun from a prison window; «New Year's Eve» is a poem of exile looking from Moscow at a child sleeping in Istanbul on a snowy night; «Poplar», «Tale of Tales» and the short pieces of 1958 devoted to the sea join exile, friendship and everyday joy; «Falling Leaves» ends by binding nature to love and friendship.

The later poets continue in different tones. In «My Room Is Nature» Ahmet Kutsi Tecer longs for a life that takes nature for its room instead of a roof; in «The Light of the Sun» and «Siddhartha» Asaf Halet Çelebi sets the sun beside the Buddha's tree; in «Snow» Ahmet Muhip Dıranas gives a winter calm as a dream; in «Today the Weather Is Fine» Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı ties the day's joy to a prayer of brotherhood for all people. Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu's «Open, Earth, Open» and Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca's «Greening Earth» bind the earth to hunger, abundance and peace; Orhan Veli, in «For Those Who Miss the Sea» and «Fluttering Poem», voices in the plainest language a wish to become a bird and a leaf.

• The poems are short, fit on a page or two, and cluster around everyday images of nature such as sea, tree, snow, earth and spring
• The book orders poets by birth year; each poet's name carries a date range and old words are glossed at the foot of the page
• The selection places the classical symbolist (Yahya Kemal, Haşim), the social (Nâzım Hikmet) and the plain-spoken «Garip» (Orhan Veli) voices side by side
• The book ends with short biographies and a table of contents; the poems themselves are not given commentary