Poetry

1. Poetry is the sound heard while delving into the beyond, and the moan coming from those so engaged. Its sounds and tunes are sometimes uproarious and sometimes fine, for they depend on the poet's spiritual condition and inner depth. For this reason, poetry's every word and sound can be comprehended fully only if the hearer knows the poet's spiritual state at the time of his or her poem's conception.

2. Poetry is born and takes shape according to the belief, culture, and style of thought affecting the poet's view and sensitivity. Only inspiration deepens it and causes it to transcend consciousness. In a heart that is exuberant with inspiration, an atom becomes a sun and a drop becomes an ocean.

3. Regardless of how great the role of intelligence and thought is in poetry, the human heart has a deep direction of its own. In Fuzûlî's words: "My word carries the standard before the army of poets." When thoughts growing in the heart put on the wings of imagination, they begin to force the doors of infinity.

4. Poetry, like entreaty, expresses the ups and downs as well as the enthusiasm and sadness of the individual's inner world. To the extent the poet concentrates on exalted truths, the resulting poems become like breaths from beyond. Every supplication is a poem, and every poem is a supplication if it flutters its wings toward infinity.

5. A poem that grows in the thought of infinity and flies in the skies of pure thought with the heart's wings and the spirit's strength does not pay too much attention to positive thought. It uses the material, concrete world only as a vehicle to find and catch the abstract.

6. Poetry is far more than rhymed speech, for the meaning and way of expression of many non-metrical phrases attract the spirit and awaken wonder and amazement in the heart. Each is a monument of poetry in itself.

7. Like every branch of art, poetry that is unconnected to the infinite is barren and dim. The human spirit fascinated with infinite beauty, the human heart is obsessed with infinity, and the human conscience longing for the eternal and eternity plead with artists to delve into the beyond. An artist who resists this plea spends a lifetime imitating the external face of things, for he or she cannot see beyond this curtain of lace.

8. A poem that considers form and meaning in the relationship resembling that between the spirit and body, without sacrificing one to the other, will attain a harmony that everyone will like and find natural. Even the imagination will be unable to suggest a new motif for such a poem. Criteria or Lights of the Way, Izmir 1990, Vol. 3, pp. 12-23

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