Amman — The book The Linguistic Lexicon in Hameed Saeed’s Poetry by writer and researcher Hani Ali Al-Hindi, published by Dijlah Publishers and Distributors, offers a critical perspective on the poetic experience of poet Hameed Saeed by examining his distinctive language and tracing the vocabulary, structures and semantic fields that shaped his poetic lexicon and contributed to the development of his artistic and intellectual experience.
اضافة اعلان
The study begins with the distinctive nature of Hameed Saeed’s poetic language, which combines simplicity and sweetness on the one hand with density, suggestiveness and multiple meanings on the other. Al-Hindi traces the poet’s ability to move beyond the direct lexical meaning of a word and give it new meanings imposed by the poetic context, while also drawing on the language of everyday life and popular and religious heritage, bringing the poem into direct contact with reality, memory and the cultural environment.
The study is not limited to the purely linguistic aspect. It connects the poetic lexicon to Hameed Saeed’s human and intellectual experience, as well as the impact of political transformations, wars, exile and longing for home on his vocabulary and poetic imagery. It also examines the presence of heritage, figures, places, and the vocabulary of war, death and exile as fundamental elements in shaping his poetic world.
The book also examines the artistic techniques Hameed Saeed employed in constructing his poetry, foremost among them repetition in its various forms and the semantic, musical and psychological functions it performs. It explains how the poet drew on Arab, religious and popular heritage, not as ready-made material, but by reshaping it within the modern text to serve his vision and concerns.
In the introduction to the book, Al-Hindi says: “I came to know the poet Hameed Saeed through Years of Amman by writer and critic Salim Al-Najjar, which I had the honor of reviewing. This gave me the opportunity to get to know the poet more closely, and I discovered in him a walking cultural encyclopedia, an avid reader of ancient Arab heritage and world literature who has written about literature, thought and politics. His poetic works have attracted the attention of critics and scholars, who have studied and analyzed them, tracing their artistic structure and the multiple dimensions of their vision.”
Hameed Saeed is considered one of the prominent poets of modernism and belongs to the second generation, which lived alongside the pioneering generation and followed it. This generation represented a genuine continuation of the pioneering experience and was driven by a desire to achieve individuality. It initially turned toward experimentation before returning to Arab heritage as a defining feature of its poetic journey.
Al-Hindi adds: “While reading Hameed Saeed’s poetry, I was struck by the delicacy and sweetness of his language and its closeness to the pulse of everyday life, as well as his treatment of the word as a symbol whose meanings take shape according to the poetic context and the idea. This prompted me to delve into his poetic lexicon.”
The book is divided into five main chapters. The first examines the semantic fields that recur in Hameed Saeed’s poetry, while the second focuses on the vocabulary of war, figures and numbers. The third addresses the language of everyday life, including colloquial expressions, the vocabulary of civilization and the language of journalism. The fourth explores Arab, popular and religious heritage, distinguishing between vocabulary related to religious heritage and religious intertextuality. The fifth examines repetition and its various forms.
Discussing poetic language, Al-Hindi explains that modern poetry goes beyond the direct lexical meaning of a word, allowing it to acquire new or multiple meanings within the poetic context. He notes that Hameed Saeed’s language draws on his local environment and its connection to popular heritage. His early poems were characterized by simplicity, directness and engagement with the language of society before his experience gradually developed toward greater condensation and semantic deviation, in keeping with his intellectual and philosophical vision.
The author considers the poetic lexicon one of the most important elements revealing a poet’s stylistic identity. It is the collection of words and structures that recur throughout his work and emerge from his environment, culture, experiences and view of life. From this perspective, Hameed Saeed’s lexicon reveals a clear presence of the language of the street and everyday life, the names of cities and villages, rivers and seas, and the vocabulary of civilization, as well as customs, traditions and heritage and religious terminology.
The political events and wars experienced by Iraq also enriched this lexicon with words associated with war, exile, displacement, diasporas, death, martyrdom, longing and hunger. This brought his poetry close to the language of everyday speech without simply reproducing it; instead, he reshaped and developed it within a poetic context.
Al-Hindi notes that Hameed Saeed’s lexicon is generally free of harsh or highly unusual vocabulary, reflecting the poet’s commitment to a simple and elegant language that is nevertheless capable of producing profound meanings.
The book gives particular importance to the phenomenon of repetition. The author argues that Hameed Saeed employed it extensively and skillfully, repeating letters, words and sentences, as well as titles, nouns, verbs, forms, styles, derivations and numbers. This helped reinforce ideas, deepen meaning and give the poem an internal musical quality, while also revealing the psychological state experienced by the poet at the moment of writing.
Al-Hindi believes that Hameed Saeed’s extensive reading enabled him to absorb the features of modernist poetry and embrace experimentation while preserving the presence of Arab heritage in the construction of the poem. His experience has been distinguished by its treatment of themes including unity, alienation, longing, grief and devastation, alongside the use of rhythm and dramatic structure.
According to the study, the poet also succeeded in transforming the vocabulary of everyday life into a poetic language capable of capturing the pulse of the street with simplicity without sacrificing its suggestive depth. He also employed historical, literary and fictional figures as symbols that helped him interpret contemporary reality and establish connections between the past and the present.
The author argues that Hameed Saeed successfully built a bridge between the authenticity of heritage and the modernity of poetic vision. In his work, heritage is not an escape from reality, but a means of reading it, revealing its dimensions and looking toward the future. Likewise, intertextuality in his poetry is not merely a formal quotation or verbal embellishment; rather, it is reshaped and employed in ways that align with his emotional and intellectual experience, creating an interaction between national and human sentiment and cultural and religious heritage.
Resource: Al-Ghad.
