The Jazz Season: Selected Poems

Edip Cansever (1928-1985) was born in Istanbul. He grew up in a country transitioning from the Ottoman Empire into a modern Turkish republic. As a student of law and sociology he was widely influenced by Western modernism and Eastern mysticism. To the outside world, Cansever's was an unremarkable life, spending most of it in Istanbul's Covered Bazaar where he worked as an antiques dealer. It's entirely fitting that a poet who came to define Turkish modernity should have made his living amon...