Pisces 28. A shy poet in hiding.
Arad Yavuz, famed poet, was, during his lifetime never to be found. He kept his whereabouts and his identity secret, which only served to inflame the curiosity of many, who searched for him, sought him out, but to no avail.
In the preface to his last book of poems he wrote: “I have never read a criticism of my work, have never spoken to anyone of my poems. My work is a landscape in which I dwell, alone, and I prefer this secret and solitary communion with it. To know the responses of other readers would change this connection, would alter it, and I wish not for this to happen. And so I remain faceless and without biography.”
After his death the novelist Arjad Peyor wrote an imaginary biography of Yavuz, a work of fiaction, one that wove his poems intricately into a narrative that was compelling, vivid and believable, a biography which provided a compelling explanation of how the poems related to his imagined live.
To this day, centuries later, there are still some who speculate that Peyor was actually a close friend of Yavuz, and that the biography is actually true — though none will ever know for sure.