TY - JOUR T1 - From Mundane to Memorable: The Poetics of Everyman in the Poetry of W.H. Auden and Orhan Veli Kanık AU - Can, Meltem PY - 2025 DA - June Y2 - 2025 DO - 10.26650/LITERA2024-1594217 JF - Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies JO - Litera PB - İstanbul Üniversitesi WT - DergiPark SN - 2602-2117 SP - 277 EP - 294 VL - 35 IS - 1 LA - en AB - Twentieth-century poetry, shaped by the turmoil of the two World Wars, military conflicts, poverty, and oppressive regimes, often gives voice to those ignored by history. W. H. Auden in Anglo-American literature and Orhan Veli Kanık in Turkish verse emerge as pioneering figures of this chaotic era and offer a democratic poetics foregrounding the lives of ordinary people. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” and Veli’s “Epitaph” (Kitabe-i Sengi Mezar) portray the unremarkable lives and de-individualization of common men that eventually sink into oblivion upon death. Similarly, Auden’s “Sonnet XVI” and Orhan Veli’s “Bayrak” (The Flag) capture the despair and futility of war, defy its glorification, and reflect on how ordinary people are sent to their deaths by those in power. In that regard, this study argues that these poems exalt human life over socio-political ideologies and realistically portray the disparaged lives of the common people—whether lost within the masses or consumed by the horrors of war. By reclaiming the dignity of the individual reduced to a mere statistic or dispensable entity, Auden and Kanık, in these works, seek to re-humanize him and call for a deeper recognition of the value of the individual amidst the all-pervading forces of politics and war and, present a democratized, collectivist, and humanistic poetry that designates ordinary lives as extraordinary. Thus, these poems redefine poetry as a medium that celebrates the dignity and value of the common man’s life over great historical figures and ideologies. KW - The Unknown Citizen KW - Sonnet XVI KW - Kitabe-i Sengi Mezar KW - Bayrak KW - Common Man CR - Arana, R. V. (2009). W.H. Auden’s Poetry: Mythos, Theory, and Practice. Cambria Press. google scholar CR - Auden W. H. (1948). The Poet and the City. In The Dyers Hand And Other Essays (pp. 72-89). Random House. http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.16420. google scholar CR - Auden, W. H. (1979). Selected Poems (E. Mendelson, Ed.). Faber & Faber. google scholar CR - Carter, R., & McRae, J. (1996). The Penguin Guide to English Literature: Britain and Ireland. Penguin Books. google scholar CR - Daiches, D., & Stallworthy, J. (1993). W. H. Auden. In M. H. Abrams (Ed.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature (6th ed., pp. 2261-2262). W. W Norton. google scholar CR - Duyan, E. (2021). Tame Modernism: The Manifestos of Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Orhan Veli Kanık. Tasarim+Kuram, 17(34), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.14744/tasarimkuram.2021.53244. google scholar CR - Halman, T. S. (1972). Modern Turkish Literature: Disorientation and Reorientation. Books Abroad, 48(1), 220-225. google scholar CR - Halman, T. S. (2011). A Millennium of Turkish Literature A Concise History (Jayne L. Warner, Ed.). Syracuse University Press. google scholar CR - Hardy, T. (2016). The Variorum Edition of the Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy (J. Gibson, Ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar CR - Izzo, D. G. (2004). W.H. Auden Encyclopaedia. McFarland. google scholar CR - Kanık, O. V. (2016). Orhan Veli- The Complete Works (G. Messo, Ed. & Trans.). Shearsman Book. google scholar CR - Kanık, O. V., Cevdet, M., & Fırat, O. (1941). Garip: A Turkish Poetry Manifesto (Sidney Wade & Efe Murad, Trans.). In The Critical Flame (Sidney Wade and Efe Murad.). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382963789_ The_Garip_Preface_1941. google scholar CR - Konyali, B. Ş. (2021). Garip Poetikası ekseninde Orhan Veli şiirinde şairanelik ve eda sorunu. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 25, 429-438. https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.1032434. google scholar CR - Mendelson, E. (2017). Early Auden, Later Auden: A Critical Biography. Princeton University Press. google scholar CR - Messo, G. (2016). Introduction (G. Messo, Trans.). In G. Messo (Ed.), The Complete Poems. Shearsman Books. google scholar CR - Raichura, S., Singh, A., & Auden, W. H. (1975). A Conversation with W. H Auden. Southwest Review, 60(1), 27-36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43468693. google scholar CR - Roberts, T. D., & Corporation, S. R. (1970). Area Handbook for the Republic of Turkey. U.S. Government Printing Office. google scholar CR - Sazyek, H. (1996). Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk Şiirinde Garip Hareketi. Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları. google scholar CR - Stephen, M. (2000). English Literature: A Student Guide. Longman. google scholar CR - Tanpınar, A. H. (1992). Edebiyat Üzerine Makaleler. Dergah Yayınları. google scholar UR - https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2024-1594217 L1 - https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4406919 ER -