I was really shocked and saddened to hear the news of Daniel Pendergrass's untimely death. My condolences to all his family and friends. I didn't know him personally, but he had sent me his fine book 23 Istanbul Karabitsi to ask my advice on publicity. If he hadn't sent it to me I wouldn't have thought of writing an article about the Poets of Istanbul for Today's Zaman, a new English newspaper in Turkey. His book of course featured prominently in that article when it appeared on Jan. 18.
Hugh Pope, an Istanbul-based journalist and author, wrote an article for Today's Zaman, a new English-language newspaper in Turkey, about the poets of Istanbul. Hugh Pope is the author of Sons of the
Conquerors, The Rise of the Turkic World. His article was prompted by Daniel Pendergrass's volume of poetry, 23 Istanbul Karabitsi, published by Arabesques Press.
This is the text of his interview with Daniel Pendergrass:
How did you write 23 Istanbul Karabitsi and what does the word mean?
There is frightfully little to be found on the subject of the karabitsi—or at least little that I have found, and I have searched far and wide. Generally, the karabitsi is defined—I paraphrase Murat Nemet-Nejat here in the notes to his translation of Ece Ayhan [Sun & Moon, Los Angeles, 1997]—as a type of theatrical spectacle left over from Byzantine times. Murat Bey leaves it at that. Perhaps he was as luckless in his research as I have been.
Back to what I have gleaned. As the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires waned, so did their spectacles. The karabitsi became less grand and as time passed was more likely to take the form of a family loaded into a wagon with a dancing bear tied to the back, a few kids who could swing through the trees and the Mediterranean version of a skiffle band striking up a jaunty tune in the background.
When I was in Turkey and it had not really dawned on me that I was writing the book that would eventually be 23 Istanbul Karabitsi, I used to go to Tophane and smoke a water pipe and look over my work.
That was when I first heard the term karabitsi: a couple was having a very loud, very dramatic and very public spat and one of the old men who was always there with his friends, smoking and playing backgammon, laughed and mentioned that we had just been gifted with a free karabitsi.
A karawhat? I asked.
The old man told me about stories he had heard of the karabitsi near the end of the Ottoman Empire. His friends told me that even today a few family karabitsi of the sort mentioned above could be found in Turkey and Eastern Europe and Greece and recalled how in the early 1900s it was not uncommon to see a family pull their wagon over to the side of the road and put on a little show and then pass the hat in one of Constantinople's villages.
I was struck by the notion and also the man's Identification of the scene between the couple as a karabitsi. Asking other folk -- colleagues at school, friends, and older kin of friends -- confirmed (as far as possible given the means of inquiry) that more modern, colloquial definition of karabitsi.
I define the karabitsi then within the context of that public or personal drama which occurs of its own volition.
When did you start traveling?
I started traveling when I joined the Peace Corps in 1981, I went to Micronesia, Seoul, then did a Masters in Journalism at Alabama, then went to Turkey. I've been to twenty countries. But I've lived a pretty boring life really. I wanted the attention to be drawn to the poems, not my life. The fleshy approach to literature never appealed to me.
I teach English, intensive English language programs. I enjoy the simplicity of it. You can really see marked progress. I will move on one day, but I still enjoy it. I'm thinking of a novel and another book of poems. Istanbul is a city that people always come back to. It
has that allure to it.
How did you get into poetry?
I was studying Korean neo-Confucianism, how to improve oneself as a person and how to govern better. Poetry is one of the ways of better understanding oneself and the word.
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