{"id":369,"date":"2021-03-16T14:09:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T21:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=369"},"modified":"2024-12-17T09:43:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T17:43:17","slug":"alpay-ulku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/alpay-ulku\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 87: Alpay Ulku"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Alpay Ulku<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Alpay\u2019s book of poems is Meteorology (BOA Editions) and the manuscript making the rounds is Mercator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a First and Second Year Poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and has received residencies from the Millay Colony and the Wurlitzer Foundation and grants from the Iowa Arts Council and the Illinois Arts Council. He graduated from the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His work has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, and the American Poetry Review. His explication of Yeats\u2019s \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d was a Poets\u2019 Pick prose feature on Poetry Daily, and Slate magazine selected one of his poems for their \u201cBest Valentine\u2019s Day Poems\u201d feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alpay splits his time between Chicago, where he works as a Business Analyst and Senior Technical Writer on a project basis for part of the year, and the Turkish resort city of Antalya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His website is www.alpayulku.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on “Spending the Night at the Blue Mountain Service Plaza on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I Dreamt I Drove into a Tractor Trailer Just Past Mile Marker 202”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When I first wrote this poem it was called \u201cGhosts\u201d and we had not yet partied like it\u2019s 1999, and I buried it in my \u2018duds\u2019 file:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve been here forever, in the screech and roll of tightening curves, white lights and yellow lights, signs you no longer bother to read. \/Some jazz, some classical. A woman calls about her cheatin\u2019 boyfriend. A man thinks the President\u2019s a crook. \/Then the silence of deep country night. A small live thing that thinks it\u2019s moving, thinks there are junctures and exits. \/A semi turns its headlights off and on. You ease into the slow lane, and there\u2019s the cop, tracking you with laser beans \/invisible to the human eye. The ghosts of two deserters from the Civil War veer off the trail and flatten behind a ridge. Forget the job,\/the apartment crowded with stuff. When you stop, you\u2019ll be there. All you need is a little faith. But you\u2019ll still be there, won\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made the poem worse in the early oughts by changing the name to \u201cDeserters\u201d and adding \u201cYour son, so she says,\u201d instead of the line about the apartment (I don\u2019t have kids). I somehow deleted my \u2018duds\u2019 file without noticing, found it a couple of years ago on an old flash drive, and revised the poem in about an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I swerved into the service plaza on an impulse, driving from Provincetown to Pittsburgh, and dreamt I drove into a tractor trailer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on “Ice Walking, Columbia Ice Field, Jasper National Park, Alberta”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This was called \u201cBlue Ice, Blue Fractals\u201d at first, and I have no idea why. Later I read an article about a couple that went hiking in the above location in the dead of winter, for their wedding anniversary, I think, and it was with great delight that I read the account to my wife, who is more of a spa-and-bubble bath type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t have a \u201cW\u201d in Turkish, so my cat\u2019s name here is Vookie Voo. I\u2019m waiting out COVID in Antalya, where the numbers are not too bad, and even street cats and street dogs have healthcare. It\u2019s true. There are municipal vets to catch-neuter\/splay-and release, but you can bring a sick or wounded animal in and they\u2019ll take care of it. If you can\u2019t bring the animal in yourself, there\u2019s an \u201cambulance\u201d that will come and get it. The city leaves food for the strays and they have cat houses for the cats, which are these cat jungle gyms enclosed by wire so only cats can get through. Others are allowed into the basements of apartment buildings, and of course people feed them, and it\u2019s a rare shop owner that won\u2019t allow a dog to hang out under the awning or bring out a bowl of water in the summer.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n

Two Poems by Alpay Ulku<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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