Eda: An Anthology of Turkish Poetry

Jerome Rothenberg has excerpted passages (here) from the fascinating introduction to Murat Nemet-Nejat’s 2004 volume of Turkish poetry. He writes that this "remarkable gathering, Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman, 2004), ... establishes “eda” as a marker of poetic process much as Lorca’s duende or the Japanese concept of yugen had ignited similar interests in the century now behind us. The rootedness of mysticism in language is central to the poetics in question, a point he hammers home with great intelligence & passion. " There is a review with selected passages from some of the poems here.

From the Introduction: "Eda is the alien other. What is this alien ghost, the way of moving and perceiving which must enter and possess English? It is Sufism, the Asiatic mode of perception which contains an intense subjectivity at its center. The pre-Islamic origin of Sufism is in Central Asian Shamanism. Turkish was the language of that area; its grammar is the quintessential Sufi language."

Page of Calligraphy 16th century Ottoman period
Probably Turkey
S1986.335 Freer & Sackler Galleries