The epic of Sheik Bedreddin : and other poems / Nazim Hikmet ; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk.

"Some of these translations originally appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Denver Quarterly, Persea, and A Review."

The poet's momentary laziness -- The worm in my body -- On the eve of a holiday -- On shirts, trousers, caps, and felt hats -- Amnesty -- Letter to my wife -- The epic of Sheik Bedreddin -- Letters from Chankiri Prison -- Letter to Kemal Tahir -- 9-10 P.M. poems -- Ninth anniversary -- Hazel are my lady's eyes -- I love you -- On Ibrahim Balaban's "Spring Picture" -- Hymn to life -- I made a journey -- Occupation -- Poem -- Poem -- About your hands and lies -- A sorry freedom -- About the sea -- Morning in Prague -- Optimistic Prague -- The thing called Prague -- Bor Hotel -- I got a letter from Münevver saying: -- I wrote a letter to Münevver saying: -- Elegy for Mikhail Refili -- Bees -- Early light -- Poem -- Poem -- Poem -- Straw-blond -- Berlin letters -- My funeral.

"In preparing our second selection of Hikmet's poetry we have chosen poems that together present the unfolding drama of his life and the parallel development of his work. For in the course of his forty-years career his poetry changed considerably as he wrote in response to his experience — both his personal experience and the greater history of the thirties, the Second World War, and its aftermath. His poems and his experience stand in a complex, dynamic relationship to each other, and if his poetry got him into trouble — 'The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin,' for example, landed him in prison — it also gave him the will and the means to withstand imprisonment and even exile. In this selection, then we see Hikmet start out in the twenties as the young revolutionary poet of the deft, irreverent, and tough early poems and change into the accomplished, historically and politically aware poet of the masterly 'Epic of Sheik Bedreddin.' Published in 1936, this 'epic' is based on an early fifteenth-century peasants' uprising against the Ottoman Empire. Sheik Bedreddin, the Turkish mystic and great Islamic scholar, translated his belief in the immanence of God into political action and advocated a kind of socialism, which declared the oneness of all people and religions and called for the abolition of private property." -- From the introduction.