Notes on the Justice of Poetry

When I was very young, a child my age named Hassan struck me below the eye with a slingshot straining at a stone. Many years later, that memory came back to me when another man named Hassan asked me why all the Hassans in my novels were demons. When I was in middle school, a fat kid always picked on me at recess. Many years later, when I had to portray a lackluster character, I would depict him sweating like that fat guy, so fat that he could only stand there, sweating constantly on his hands and forehead, just like a big water jar from the refrigerator.

When I was a kid, my mom took me shopping and I was always terrified of the butchers, who were in the stinking butcher store all day and all night, wearing blood-stained aprons and wielding long knives. I rarely ate the ribs they chopped off because they were too fatty. In my books, butchers are always depicted as guys who slaughter smuggled animals and engage in bloody and dubious deeds. And the dogs, who always love to follow me around, often bring tension and suspicion to my favorite characters in my writing.

There is a naive idea about justice similar to this. It makes the bankers, teachers, and older brothers in my writing never appear as good guys. And the barbers, because I always cried when I was taken to them as a child, and my relationship with them remained bad as time went on. Because I fell in love with those lovely stallions during my childhood summer vacation in Black Belialda, I always like to devote a large portion of the book to horses and carriages. My horse protagonists were always sharp, witty, brave, and pure, but often deceived by the devil. And because my childhood life was always filled with friendly, kind people who loved to smile at me, there are many such characters in my works. However, the so-called justice makes us think of the devil first. In the reader's mind, one always has a vague sense of justice, like walking through an art gallery: we expect from poets that they will somehow seek revenge on the devil.

As I have explained, I attempt to seek revenge on the devil alone, and for the most part, I do this in an extremely personal way, but in a way that is not intended to make the reader think that revenge is a beautiful thing. Because, ideally, karma can only culminate at the end of a fairy tale or adventure comic. When the hero punishes the bad guy, he will say, "This beating is for xxx, this one is for xxx." As a novelist, I created a scene in which I listed the villainous deeds of a bad guy Hasan or a butcher until the butcher or a bad guy was horrified, dropped the knife in his hand, and began to clean up the store, crying out: "Please, brother, please don't be so merciless to me, I have a wife and children!"

Revenge brings revenge. Two years ago, in Markka Park, eight or nine dogs surrounded me and attacked me. It seems they had read my book and knew that I insisted on poetic justice to punish them for always wandering around the parks of Istanbul in packs. So, poetic justice is also dangerous: if you go too far, it might just ruin not only your book, and your work but your daily life. You may be able to retaliate very subtly, thinking that no one is smarter than you and that your writing couldn't be more beautiful, but there will always be that pack of dogs that will gather in the corner, waiting for the vengeful literary man to walk by alone and bite him hard.