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Ece Ayhan. The Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies. Murat Nemet-Nejat, tr. Los Angeles. Sun & Moon. 1997. 81 pages. $10.95.
Ece Ay,han (b. 1931) has been a marvelous maverick of Turkish poetry since he erupted on the scene in the 1950s. He was a member of a group of young poets who were dubbed "The Second New" (the first new poets being Orhan Veli Kanik, Oktay Rifat, and Melih Cevdet Anday of the "Garip" [Strange] group). Ayhan and his corevolutionaries launched a neosurrealist movement that was intentionally obscurantist. Many of these younger poets seemed to take pride in being practitioners of "anlamsiz sir" (meaningless or absurd poetry). The best of this brave new poetry had as its hallmarks vivid imagination, an enchanting musical structure, and an intellectual complexity that dazzled with its audacious metaphors.
Most of the "Second New" poets marched toward clarity. But Ece Ayhan chose arcanum. Every element...