Post Truth Poetry
In the 2000s, as we entered a new century, the destruction of the Twin Towers psychologically revealed the idea that even a great country could be hurt and defeated. The subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan changed our perception of some things, retrospectively.
As of 2024, the 24 years we have lived in the 21st century have shown us that history now flows much faster and more complicated than before. We are in a place where lying and disinformation have taken precedence over the truth. Now, when we come across a piece of news, we spend hours trying to understand what the correct information on that subject really is. However, before this effort is over, the next piece of news is concocted and served to us. Everyone is now forced to think about the same topics. We are expected to consume the proselytizing of CNN and BBC, modern day temples, during the whole day.
We are at a point in world history where the course of the world is constantly determined by others, and we are forced to join these courses. We do not like our place but still are the voluntary supporters of the voluntary followers of this course. Poetry was able to say no to this in the 20th and 21st centuries.
“No!” Turkish poetry was able to say this out loud. It was able to say this despite the fact that its modernization was largely carried out by the followers of the Second New Movement[1]. It should be said despite because if modernization had been more central in the opposite direction, the voice of poetry might not have been as quiet as it is today.
In the history of poetry, we have encountered the monster of post-truth. We have been hung up in history at a time when even the correct perception of the history of poetry was blocked.
While we cannot fully perceive or make sense of the subjects and events, the perceptions of truth in poetry cannot be objective, either. In fact, what is called truth is a phenomenon that must be constructed subjectively. At a point in the history of poetry where predictions and assumptions are made about the future, what is really important is shaped by the idea of reinterpreting the past, which makes it easier for us to approach the ideal.
Throughout millennia of poetry’s adventure, we have been in a dark region where all sense of direction is now lost, and frightening sounds fill the air, in an “intermediate zone.” This region, reminiscent of a dystopia, has often seemed frightening to me. We are at a point where speech has lost its meaning. It’s a place where reading has become strange, where what’s considered a performance has become shallow, where it is necessary to discuss what kind of value there can be in making observations and searching for meaning.
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We have lost our connection with previous periods, and the poetry we write is a continuation of the poetry that emerged from the modern world. May Octavio Paz rest in peace. Perhaps he perfectly summarized the thousands of years of poetry’s adventure with three books that are continuations of each other (La Otra Voz, El Arco y la Lira, Children of the Mire). We have to look at our place in the aftermath of a rupture.
There was a breakup of Turkish poetry from the Divan poetry[2]. Together with the emergence of urban life and bohemian people after the construction of modern cities came the subsequent breakup with Baudelaire. This was followed by the breakup after the avant-garde, the wars, the formal breakup with Mallarmé, as well as the breakups experienced in the recent period. Around the post-60s, and due to the excesses in experimentalism where the meaning and definition of poetry eroded and changed, all listeners have become lost, and poets are left alone to their own devices.
Poetry’s breakup from itself as a genre can be described as “a practice of disappearance” because of its own internal crisis. It’s the beginning of a process heading towards disappearance. As we move towards this process of disappearance, we can talk about the emergence of new forms because of the communication poetry establishes with information. The digital language of new forms, which constantly energizes poetry, has also been one of the breakups of the post-2000 world.
We can say that the power of paper has given way to the power of the screen. However, the power of these screens is not an innocent form of power. At least, it is not more innocent than paper. Because it produces a different environment for writing, its interaction with other media produces strange results. Poetry is constantly forced to enter uncontrolled communication (non-communication) with other entities. It must enter this communication not as a subject, but as an object. It must enter the battle where it is weak. It’s on slippery ground. It must constantly fall to the ground, and bleed. Like a chameleon that constantly takes on different colors in an “intermediate zone,” a sick one.
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After the truth, we head towards the history of poetry, but where is this walk headed? To the history of world poetry or to the history of Turkish poetry? If we look at those before us, we need to go to the history of world poetry first and universalize it as much as we can.
For instance, we read Octavio Paz. He tells us at length about the formation process of poetry in Europe and Latin America. Although he is Mexican, he examines European poetry at length, too. An American poet can build a poem on writing haiku. Or, Robert Bly, in a study called Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations (University of Pittsburgh Press), builds his thoughts on poetry or on poets such as Lorca, Neruda, and Valery. Both Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire try to see something new by translating Poe’s poems.
In Turkish poetry, names such as Orhan Veli and Sezai Karakoç look into French poetry, perceive something and try to give direction to their poems. Sezai Karakoç says the following in his memoirs:
“… from many French poets, I wanted to bring the atmosphere of poetry that was sterilized by the Orhan Veli movement[3] back to a broad lyrical plan by making translations from Claudel, Prévert and Guillievic.”
If we pay attention, we see that the situation perceived as a problem in Turkish poetry is solved by consulting world poetry.
Poets of our time, including me, should go on such paths, reestablish the connection of poetry with the “current”, and dilute the blood in these clogged veins although post-truth tries to prevent this journey, which is a legitimate round-trip ticket to the history of poetry, like a “bandit” or a “monster”. We have to hear the universal voice of poetry better.
The democratization of thought came with the development of human rights; the democratization of politics came with the processes leading to multi-party politics; and the democratization of poetry came with the change in the ways the poet positions himself/herself within the modern world. Now, the poets abandoned their rush to speak politically, and the idea that they were great social figures, as well as the great words they wrote in a newspaper column as they got closer to the present day. They had to abandon those anyway. They gave up the social and political sentences they felt obliged to say in magazines. The spell was broken. They saw that the intellectual figure writing in a newspaper gradually disappeared and lost its meaning. As we got closer to the present day, they democratized the tools they had. They knew that power could not come from a newspaper, and that modern communication tools themselves were already the ideological apparatus of power.
Post-truth reflects a darkness more frightening than the “twilight of the avant-garde” onto us from computer screens. In other words, there is a war of the screen with the screen (Paul Virilio). Poetry is lost here. At the same time, it is everywhere we can see.
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[1] A movement of poetry between 1954 -1980 which impacted Turkish poetry.
[2] Turkish poetry written in Arabic script during the Ottoman Empire, circa 1200-1900.
[3] The poetry movement started by Orhan Veli Kanık, Melih Cevdet Anday and Oktay Rifat, called Garip (it means interesting). It was influential until the “Second New” movement. The language of poetry is simple and ordinary. The topics are chosen from daily life.
