About the Book

About the book: “haiku on the steppe”

 The author was acquainted with haiku quite early in life.

But the writing of it came quite late.

 In the title, there is the term “steppe”, somehow. That is to imply land, landscape, situations and responses. Still, the perspective is not limited to the steppe only. It may be one stage of the origin. There are of course the sea mount forest jungle as well. Yet the steppe may be a motivating effect, leading to the rest.

 It is seen, from the numbers, that some are skipped.

It is not deliberate. It is due to the problems of translation.

 To attempt to translate all, as originals are in Turkish, would be somewhat a forced effort, and would not work, especially for poetry, for haiku. 

About the Author

A peasant boy in hard conditions. At times he walks to school barefoot, in snow.
 
At teacher training school, he learns English by himself.
 
He receives a grant, gets his BA in the US.
 
Attracted to Zen, he starts to do judo.
 
He learns of “haiku”, in brevity, similar to Turkish folk poem, “mani”.
 
As part of his concern with utopias, he goes to a mount to write one. He delays the utopia and goes to mountains with university students, for more than ten years.
 
By then he is a professor of English literature, and has published books of poetry in Turkish.