Neynur’dan

My first encounter with Nurduran Duman’s Neynur series occurred when I was visiting Istanbul about eighteen months ago, my final time in the city as a visitor before moving here last summer. I was spending the day with Nurduran and James Meetze, and as we sat next to the Bosporus, Nurduran pulled out her notebook and said, “I’m working on something new.” As I began to page through the handwritten poems, reading what at the time were about twelve of the now-eighteen-poem sequence, I overheard Nurduran and James begin to talk about Mevlânâ Rumi, mysticism, and how to hear the call of the reed flute.

A few months later, Duman sent me the completed manuscript: Neynur. The poems trace Duman’s spiritual move inward, a vital search for her self and her center. Each poem (a numbered beyit or “verse”) begins with a couplet from Rumi’s “Song of the Reed,” presented in transliterated Persian alongside the Turkish translation (and now also with an English translation). From that origin point, Duman steps onward and outward, treading Rumi’s path and her own individual and divergent path at the same time.

The poems initiate an intense spiritual search that climbs to the heights and plumbs the depths of the self and how the self positions itself within the world. The poems turn in on themselves, inverting space, the body, and language as Duman’s insides pull outward, as she seeks the call of her reed flute (Ney), as she searches for her divine light (Nur). Duman’s lines explore the searing, thoughtful, challenging, and profound spiritual roots of Rumi’s verses. As I watch Duman’s search through these poems, I see many things anew. Rumi’s word becomes both more complex and more clear. I see Duman find the something within the void. I see my own possible paths stretch out ahead, a potential way for me to walk forward, to hear the flute, and to see the light.