About the poem book "North Star"

(Concept Translation)

About the poem book "North Star"

The poems in the North Star consist of word motifs, which are processed on the basis of individual feelings and thoughts and are mainly based on two colors. It remained private within the general picture; but there are also objective pursuits from time to time.

Poetry is like an arrow that shoots from the poet's point of view and finds its target. The whole problem is the spring tension point. If we don't properly adjust this tension point, the poem's deviation increases. It stops breathing before reaching the target or it sinks into the target board at great speed and takes the poem from where it should be to different dimensions. Then it does not fulfill its functionality. It's up to us how and where to use the words in the most correct and effective way.

The poetry book “North Star” is written by an immigrant who lives in the Netherlands. It bears the signature of Turgay Usanmaz. The book consists of two parts. Part 1; it is titled "My heart is making a revolution". There are forty-nine poems in this section. As he states in the book's preface, he fell in love with pen pals. In this section, he scattered a collection of poems he wrote for a girl living in USA, in the atmosphere where he was influenced by the tides of emotions he experienced before and after seeing her. The poems in this section are a mixture of poems based on the individual that has not been stripped of its subjectivity.

Let's go to the second part: The number of poems in this part is twenty. That is almost half the number of poems in the first chapter. While we question his feelings after meeting him (his lover), we can see that he detaches from the abstract world and moves step by step towards the concrete world and his feet are on the ground. This shows that the subjective output in the first chapter gives the impression of gradually leaving its place for the objective structuring. Poems begin to ripen. The poet gets rid of his dream world and faces real life. This confrontation brings with it the maturation in his poems.

......

Turgay Usanmaz is a very emotional person. He lives it inside. His heart is full of longing for love. He feels the pain of homelessness deep within him. He has a very fast loving heart. Are human relations spontaneous as it is. Everything is open and visible. He has nothing to hide and a spirit of sharing. So the humanist side outweighs. He lives his love personally. He can't socialize and spread that.

Because this individuality is expressed in his poems, he gets stuck at some point. After listening to Turgay Usanmaz this far, I think let's move on to the poems in the second part of the book. The poem on the thirty-first page caught my attention.

my poem

don't argue about the quality of my poems
don't be insulting when you criticize
I don't write to be a "poet"
I wasn't into poetry before
I am in love with her
my heart is on fire
I wrote for her
my love for her
became a letter
became a word
became a sentence
started to take shape
became a poem in this page

I think no more words are needed. Dear Turgay Usanmaz has already made his own self-criticism with this poem. I would like to end my words with these words of Balzac on poetry: "Poetry is something born after long, sad journeys in the lands of the mind"

I hope to meet you in another bunch of roses...

Atila Er
Izmir, February 17, 2001