A Turkish Bookstore

Robinson Crusoe bookstore, İstiklal Caddesi, poetry on the left, fiction on the right.

Upon brief inspection, poetry sections in the bookstores along İstiklal Caddesi receive much more love than their counterparts stateside.  We are talking prime shelf placement, and significant table display space.  Robinson Crusoe, my favorite so far of the many bookstores along this main drag, has a rather extensive selection of poetry in both Turkish and English (Turkish upstairs, English downstairs.)  The poetry in the Turkish section is primarily from Turkish-language authors, but there was a rather extensive collection of poems from other languages as well, including the following (note: briefly jotted down, no promise as to comprehensiveness):

Paul Auster
Charles Bukowski
Lord Byron
Paul Celan
Paul Eluard
Allen Ginsberg
James Joyce
F.G. Lorca
James Lovett
R.M. Rilke
Pablo Neruda
Novalis
Cesar Pavese
Petrarch
E.A. Poe
Boris Pasternak
Arthur Rimbaud
Sappho
Virgil
William Blake (Marriage of Heaven & Hell and Songs of Innocence, but no Songs of Experience, however we should take that…)
Ted Hughes
Guillaume Apollinaire

A rather interesting collection of poets to be translated, I think.  Some standards, such as Neruda, that just seem to be sellers everywhere in any language.  Some classics, such as Virgil or Sappho.  Then some kind of seemingly random choices–Hughes and Byron the British poets?  Ginsberg and Bukowski the American poets?  No Pound, no Eliot, no Whitman, no Wordsworth, &c.  But generally the selection was I’d say roughly 85-90% Turkish poets, so the work-in-translation is inherently going to be pretty spotty and random.  Would be interested to know how the above listed sell.

Though my Turkish at the time is remarkably elementary, I couldn’t resist getting three books.  The first was a collection of Ece Ayhan’s poems, whose work I read in translation and was absolutely blown away, in the selection Blind Cat Black and The Orthodoxies (which is being re-released this fall by Green Integer).  The second is a collection from Serkan Işın::b０nus.  I was initially looking for a different book of his, that from what I understand recently was released, entitled Dada Korkut, but which nobody around here seems to have (hmmm…..).  More about this book in a moment.  The final book is Simruy Tüzün::Serpent Yumurtası, which was a bit of a flyer as I was intrigued by the chapbook style of the book, and the strange stylistic turn towards concrete poetry (at a brief viewing–not claiming that is what is actually going on) towards the end of the collection.

So three hopefully quality purchases, though at the moment the task of actually reading the books is beyond my current abilities.

Oh, but back to Serkan Işın’s book.  Both that book and the Ece Ayhan book are published by YKY (Yapı Kredi Yayınları).  The Ayhan, though, appears as a normal trade paperback, in fact in a style that seems eerily similar to some other series of stateside poetry books, which I can’t quite place at the moment…The Ayhan clocks in at a standard 14 turkish lira, or roughly $10.  The Işın, though, is a completely different style, a single red color, and square(ish) rather than the taller rectangle of a standard trade paperback.  The price is also a completely different price point–5 turkish lira, or roughly $3.  What I find most interesting, though, is that the pages are uncut.  This is something that I have in fact never encountered before, and something that I am quite excited about.  I need to ask around a bit more to determine if this is the case, but the YKY trade paperbacks seem to be primarily selected and collected works, whereas the smaller, cheaper, almost chapbook type of books seem to be primarily contemporary single book collections.  And I think each style they have chosen really works for the purpose of the book.  The uncut pages, slightly different size, and most of all great price point, certainly create an aura of excitement about buying the book.  It just seems perfectly appropriate in a way that I rarely feel most contemporary American books do.  I most wonder how they achieve such a low price.  I guess it is possible (though I’m not sure) that YKY has government sponsorship.  There is a YKY bookstore, actually just a bit down the road from Robinson Crusoe, so perhaps that is an assistance as they get to sell at least a portion of their books at retail prices rather than simply wholesale prices.  But I doubt that that in itself is enough.  There is something fundamental about the process that is different.  It isn’t quality, as the cover and paper are of good quality, at standard trade levels, well above digital/print on demand quality.  The standard style for these contemporary books and resulting savings on design wouldn’t be enough to account for more than a modest decrease in price.

Regardless, three books I am pretty excited about adding to my collection.  I am contemplating making a rough translation of one of the poems as an upcoming poem of the week, but to promise that seems pretty ambitious.  We shall see.  On an exit note:

Filed under: Poetry, Publishing , Ece Ayhan, Poetry in Translation, Robinson Crusoe Bookstore, Serkan Işın, Simruy Tüzün, Turkish Poetry, Yapı Kredi Yayınları