The Poetics and Politics of Bayard Taylor’s The Lands of the Saracen and Poems of the Orient

Year 2010, Issue: 31, 1 - 21, 01.04.2010

Verena Laschinger

Abstract

It rained when I got on the plane in Toulouse. A couple of hours, a stop-over and few intermittent glimpses out of the window later, Istanbul finally stretched out underneath me: a panoply of Lego-sized rectangulars and a multitude of pencil-thin lines meandering to form the intricately designed pattern of an embroidered carpet, its broad blue edge sprayed with knotty, wooly-looking white. Flying in along the shores of the Sea of Marmara, I looked down on Istanbul’s buildings, boulevards, and boats. Here and there stalagmitic minarets boldly pointed their tips towards the late summer sun. Still wrapped in the sadness of burying a friend in the Midi and feeling the soft-heartedness that only death and love stirs within us, the sight of the city actually made me smile. Even though flying back to Istanbul had been difficult at times over the past four years, it was not difficult today.

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