How Abraham Abandoned Me

by Bejan Matur, Ruth Christie (Translator), Selçuk Berilgen (Translator)

This collection covers the broad vision of mankind's history with a story of an individual journey, in the course of which the poet explores the cosmic and the microcosm, the immensities of Time and Space, of becoming and Being. The poems came during a pilgrimage in south-eastern Anatolia. Matur has created a personalised iconography based on Islamic references and imagery, presenting complex ideas with a simplicity of expression that is perfectly mirrored in Ruth Christie's translation.

Genres: Poetry, Turkish

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Aslı Can]

Uzzuuuuun zamandır Türkçe şiir yazan ve kendimi şiirlerinde çözdürebileceğim şair arayışındaydım. Özellikle, en azından cis-erkek olmamasını da istiyordum çünkü kitapçı kitapçı gezip, şiir reyonlarının silme erkek şairle dolu olduğunu görmek biraz sinirlendiriyor beni. Sadece benim etrafımda bir sürü bir sürü müthiş şiirler yazan kadın ve lubunyalar varken, neden bütün raflar beyaz erkek şairlerin şiirleriyle dolu ki?

Velhasıl, Bejan Matur derdime çare hislerime tercüman oldu ve Edip Cansever'den sonra, gerçekten yazdığı çoğu şiirle bağ kurabildiğim bir şairim daha oldu. Çok çok sevdim kendisini, seri okumalar geliyor.

[Serkan B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mistik.

[Betül YILMAZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bir şiir kitabını okudum demek ne derece doğrudur bilmiyorum, dizeleri ben yürürken ansızın adımlarıma vurmuyorsa henüz okudum saymıyorum. Ama İbrahim'in beni terk etmesi zamanla bu konumu alacak, şimdilik okudum diyeyim, sonra yaşadıklarımın üstünü diğer şiirler kadar onunla da kaplayacağım. Çünkü içime öyle vurdu ki, ansızın kapattım kapağını.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Bejan Matur made me reread Murat Nemet-Nejat's essay on Godless Sufism and Eda in his anthology by the same name, and I debated these ideas again and again. While Eda seems part and parcel of any poetic voice, the idea of a godless Sufism, while brilliant, seems somewhat misleading.
Bejan Matur's poetry gives us a way to understand this idea much better. Whereas a Sunni thinker like the philosopher and mystic Al Ghazali is very careful to provide a transcendent space between God above and his manifestations below, Nemet-Nejat rightly points to the animistic features of both pre-Islamic Turkish society and its later heterodox forms that expressed the animistic in the transcendence and the transcendent in the animistic, thus leaving such practitioners open to accusations of heresy.
But I would suggest that there is nothing godless in all this, just perhaps too much immanent godly presence for the orthodox. The basis of this tradition, found in the ilahi poetry of sheik-poets and the troubadour songs of the Anatolian ozans, has been transmuted into the gold of the modernist Turkish poetry of the 20th and 21st century. Though other forms of Western poetry, such as the Beats and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry influence some Turkish poets, many refer back to these deeply Turkish traditions in their writing.
Such is the case with Bejan Matur. As I have been translating some of her work of late, I love that How Abraham Abandoned me was bilingual; I could read the Turkish, look over at the English, try to analyze how it was translated and why. This was a great if time-consuming pleasure I will gladly do it again if the opportunity presents itself.
More importantly, I saw how Matur's poems are deeply rooted in the rural setting of her family home, the Alevi tradition of her ancestors, her Kurdish background, and a sacred relationship to both the animate and inanimate aspects of the world. Though often couched in relatively indirect language when compared to the way English language poets write, the emotional depth of her work also runs deep in the more direct passages expressing a mother's love for her daughter.
Needless to say, I highly recommend Matur to all. A mystical depth permeates her language. So many of the poems I read in the United States are committed to the rational and empirical. If the poet takes the opposite approach, the work is often unmoored from physical life in the attempt to achieve oneiric clarity. Matur refuses to sacrifice one for the other, walking the narrow road at a relaxed, reassuring pace, discovering many incredible things to exalt along the way.

[Fatih · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fırat Nehri'ni hiç görmedim, o topraklara hiç ayak başladım; fakat bu kitaptaki şiirleri okurken sanki o nehrin kenarında bir yudum su içmeye çalışıyorum ve gece çökmüş serin bir hava var, yıldızlar ve aydan başka ışık yok. O topraklarda şimdiye kadar yaşanmış ne kadar acı varsa hissetmeye çalışıyorum belki de ki asla hissedilemez. Kısacası duygularımı yoğunlaştıran oralara gitme isteğimi her ne kadar içinde oralarla alakalı bir şey geçmese de arttıran bir kitap oldu.

"Yıllar sonra
Yurduna dönen bir adamın
Buğdayları okşamasından daha hüzünlü
Karanlık ve gidişin soluğu"

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can do no better than quote the comments by John Berger from the back cover: "Impossible to describe her poetry in prose"!