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To celebrate World Poetry Day, here are some of my favorite poets an their poems: Rainer Maria Rilke - Der Ölbaumgarten - The Olive Garden   Pablo Neruda - Ode to the Onion   Federico Garcia Lorca   - Romance Sonámbulo - Sonambulo Romance   Ezra Pound  - Cino   T.S. Eliot  - The Wasteland   Bob Dylan Visions of Johanna Poetry deserves celebration. As the Turkish poet Sezen Aksu wrote 19 years ago: Eyvah şiirler azalmış, günümüz perişan Yanıyor içimizdeki koskoca orman -- Poetry is dying out, How miserable is our day, The great forest in our hearts, Is burning out

"Bazen haykirmak istersin, sesizligin taa derinine, Ve iste o zaman aglarsin sessizce en derinine..." -Rilke

"The Thinker" may be in sculpture what Mona Lisa is in painting. This is at least true in Turkey. The sculptor of this and many more great works Aguste Rodin died today in 1917. I became interested in his works not by his most famous work, but through Rainer Maria Rilke, his good friend, and one time his assistant. It was he who thought Rilke the power of observation of simple things, and therefore inspired his "Dinggedichte" the poems of things. Such as "The Panther", which in my humble opinion, is the one of the warmest expressions of existentialism: The Panther Translated by Ronnie Pontiac His sight, passing by the bars, exhausted, sees nothing else. For him there are a thousand bars, a thousand bars, and beyond them no world. His limber lope and powerful pace ever turning in the smallest circle dance strength around a center where a great will stands numb. Sometimes the veil of his pupil parts silently an image goes in past the tense poise of still lim...

"I looked for you to give me transcendent experiences To transport me out of self and aloneness sent alienation Into a sense of oneness and connection, ecstatic and magical I became a junkie for it" from Rilkean Heart by Cocteau Twins: in memory of great German poet Rilke, who wrote many of such mesmerizing lines: Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille - und hört im Herzen auf zu sein. and my humble translation into Turkish: Panter Parmakliklarin gecit töreninden, Öyle yoruldu ki bakislari, artik dayanamiyor hic birseye....