“A rare guide to remaining hopeful and in love with life, pure of heart and human, passionate and dedicated to the common good.”

-from the Foreword by Carolyn Forche

This second edition of Poems of Nazim Hikmet, revised and expanded on the occasion of the poet’s centennial, features his one hundred best poems, chosen from the length of his forty-year career and presented in the widely acclaimed English versions that have made him such an influential presence in contemporary poetry for the past quarter-century. The first and foremost modern Turkish poet, Hikmet (1902-1903) served a thirteen-year sentence as a pılitical prisoner in his native Turkey and spent his last thirteen years in wxile. Banned in his own country for thirty years, his poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages, and today he is recognized around the world as one of the essential poets of the twentieth century and even “one of the great poetic voices of all time” (Multicultural, review).