Poems of Nazim Hikmet

Book excerpt: Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), the greatest modern Turkish poet was a political prisoner in Turkey for eighteen years and spent the last thirteen years of his life in exile. Banned in his own country for thirty years, his poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages, and today he is recognized world-wide as one of the twentieth century's great international poets. This revised and enlarged selection of his finest work enables us at last to hear, in a single volume, the full range of his distinctive voice in the highly acclaimed versions that have made him an influential presence in contemporary poetry.