There are lots of things you can say about Turkish poetry. There is traditional folk poetry, goes back to more than thousand years and mostly anonymous. Also after Islam, there is divan literature affected (Arabic and Persian ... Read MoreCulture) poetry and again there is folk poetry. Each divides into several groups and these poetry have rules (like first two lines rhyme [I imagine this refers to the gazel/ghazal, which Wikipedia said was the primary form of much Turkish divan poetry through the ages.] , etc - Also there are types of rhymes in Turkish poetry which I don't remember right now.)
There is western poetry (which became free poetry after).
There is also modern poetry.
There are some famous poets.
Yunus Emre
Nedim
Can Yücel
Nazım Hikmet Ran
Baki (Baqi)
Attilâ İlhan
This website has links to side-by-side translations of poems by the above poets.
This website gives information about poetry at Ottoman Empire.
Scroll down to the second poem for the first appearance (here, at least) of the symbolically-essential nightingale. Scroll down farther for myriad gazels - translated with the last word of each couplet rhyming with the first, but not actually the same word. A slightly different form than the way we learn them in contemporary American poetry.
Here's a nice comment from Murat Nemet-Nejat, who translated most of the Turkish poems in our anthology, on "accented writing". It gives some insight into my question about fragmentation, etc., in my first post.
"What is, then, writing which has an accent? It is a writing which does not completely identify with the power, authority of the language it uses; but confronts, without glossing over, the gap between the user and the language. Such writing reveals an ambiguity towards power: the writer chooses to embrace a language (because of its pervasive centrality) which he/she knows is not quite his/her own, is sufficient for his/her inner purposes. Accent in writing has little to do with explicit theme or semantic context: it rather has to do with texture, structure, the scratches, distortions, painful gaps (in rhythms, syntax, diction, etc.) caused by the alien relationship between the writer and his/her adopted language. Accent is cracks (many unconcious, the way a speaker is unaware of his or her accent when speaking, does not have to create it) on the transparent surface."
I got to that comment through this website, which has lots more Turkish poetry in translation.Here is a webpage on Nemet-Nejat himself.
I should not forget Orhan Veli Kanık
Not poetry but epics.
There is a table on the right side of the page says Turkish literature. You can find some information on this page also.
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Yes, it is a well-ordered and somewhat clear superficious account of what was and is Turkish poetry from time to time. Yet, it is not subsantial enough. It isn't that hard to get into contact with someone, like Lâle Müldür, or any other expert on poetry scene from the older periods to up-to-date avantgarde metamorphisus of Turkish poetry. You just pinned up some well-known poets, but they are not satisfactory enough to appreciate and understand Turkish poetry. You know, one of the most sui generis author Sait Faik Abasıyanık did also write poetry, and we have this hipster girl who think of herself someone who she is in actual not, Pelin Batu, but her poems, collected in the book Glass, and this is poetry in English written by such a nice pussycat. And, in order to understand Orhan Veli Kanık, you must concentrate upon the wave Garip. He and such figures as Melih Cevdet Anday paved the path for the fortcoming generations in style, context and tone.
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