MİTAT DURMUŞ, MELİH CEVDET ANDAY’S UNIVERSE OF POETRY, (MELİH CEVDET ANDAY’IN ŞİİR (Ç)EVRENİ), MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION PRESS, ANKARA, 2011, 773 P., ISBN: 978-975-11-379-7

Melih Cevdet Anday, amongst the three poets of the poetic civilization program of Garip Movement (1st New Movement- Strangers’ Movement) in Turkish poetry, carried the poetic journey he started with Garip to more marginal themes and embodied a unique world of language-meaning. Mitat Durmuş’s recently published book from the Ministry of National Education Melih Cevdet Anday’s Universe of Poetry (Ç) takes one step ahead as a work filling the missing part of a monograph in Anday’s position within Turkish Literature. In particular the effect of poet’s life on the process of literary production, in the light of themes dealt separately with respect to theme, aesthetics, language-style and linguistics, acts as a road map for the poetry of Melih Cevdet. Particular literary work stands out not as a challenging style of reading to experience the poetic approach of the poet but rather a guiding study that puts into action encircling and aesthetical perception references based on the poetological theories related to Anday’s poetry. By virtue of this quality, present research seems to have blocked misleading anachronical definitions and perceptions in our poetic tradition that is frequently repeated for Anday’s poetry to place him within one single era, generation or movement. M. Durmuş at first classifies under a monographic scheme the poetic approach of M. C. Anday into four sections respectively; 1- His interest towards poetry and pre-Garip era, 2- Garip, socialist realism and Yaprak period, 3- Early seeds “Tohum” of the departure from Garip Movement, 4- “Kolları Bağlı Odysseus” ( Chained Odysseus) and its aftermath.1 This classification aims to categorize the transformation of Anday’s poetry and supplies the reader with the clues enlightening the themes in his poetic journey. Accordingly Garip draws attention as a movement Anday fit into easily and adapted the poetic language into its principles comfortably within the axle of the political and social conditions of his age. Durmuş who differently analyzes the influence of Garip on the youth of poet on the basis of the forerunners and practitioners of a literary movement narrates in his work: “Edebiyat- ı Cedide (New Literature), Fecr-i Âti, Genç Kalemler (Young Pens), Yedi Meşaleciler (Seven Torches), Beş Hececiler (Five Versists)… and all the fresh movements witnessed in Turkish poetry the most frequent emphases like ‘youth’, ‘newness’ are most of the times worded by the creators of literary movement whereas in Garip poetry the reverse holds true. (…) What is meant by these definitions is actually different; ‘young’ refers to ‘kids’. By attributing to this word of young the ignorance of meter and rhyme, lack of fine attitudes, engagement with coarse words without feeling ashamed and even valuing the use of coarseness, lack of dignity, frivolity and cynicism to describe the followers of Garip movement.”2 Based on such expressions the transformation of the traditional form and meaning extensions into a poetic irony has laid the grounds for the union between the poetry of Melih Cevdet and Garip Movement.