Poetry. Translated from the Turkish by Onder Otcu and Murat Nemet-Nejat. Ilhan Berk stands at the apex of modern Turkish literature. Considered to be one of the great innovative poets of his generation, he has at times drawn on traditional Turkish poetry for his work yet remains firmly within the modernist camp. Born in 1918, Berk published his first book in 1935, establishing himself at the cutting edge of Turkish letters. He was and, as Onder Otcu notes in the introduction, still is considered to be "the bad boy of Turkish letters." The author of more than two dozen books and an acclaimed visual artist as well as a poet, he lives today in Bodrum on Turkey's Aegean coast.