Illusion

Orhan Veli Kanık (1914–1950) described himself this way: “Two extremely thin legs, a rather short trench coat, a canary yellow scarf, a triangular face, a back that puffs out like a chest, a face of broken maturity.” He died in Istanbul at the age of thirty-six.

Richard Schwarzenberger is a poet living in San Francisco and the author of _The Mary Mardian Chronicles _(BookSurge, 2003). He earns his living as a gardener. (updated 2003)

Grace Martin Smith is a lecturer in Turkish and Ottoman at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published widely in the field of Turkish Studies and has translated (with Ann Stanford) the poems of Yunus Emre. (updated 1991)