The poems of this book together form an epic work formed from lyrical pieces. I believe this is true about Turgut A. Akter’s entire opus, in a similar manner to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which was being written throughout his whole life.
The greatness of the poet manifests itself in the unity of the author’s personality.
The poems are testimonies. We immediately experience their unique rhythm once we read them out loud, as they flow with minor changes in every line or stanza. Certain rhythmic patterns emerge, we would think they’re disconnected, but later we find out, there’s a kind of repetition providing a loose structure for improvisation. Rhyming follows freely, with a light touch at the end of dense lines and sentences often without the verb to be. We might call this quasi-intentional word-permutation thought-rhyming.
This way of writing is not far from the methods of surrealism, but here, instead of finding ad hoc word combinations, we read om aum amen amin hû.
The contents’ unity and continuity is shown in the layout and the lack of cyclical composition. The reason is that the poems were written in spiritual time, so their actual chronology is secondary. By reading we connect with this, and become part of the creative process, we continue or even rewrite the poems by our very presence.
These poems address the Friend living in us. And if we listen we can hear His word. If everything we lived through so far we give up as an offering to Him, then we might find the humbleness necessary for the putting of experience into perspective. The poetry of Turgut A. Akter teaches and makes us repeat this gesture. Probably this is the best our fellow-human can do for us.
