Wood Ringing: Transformations of Texture and Meaning in the Poetry of Nidal Al-Qassem -

Critic Hadi Nahar lives the worlds of poet Nidal Al-Qassem in his distinguished creative experience over many years, during which he published collections that filled this interesting book. Critic Hadi sailed with poet Al-Qassem in the depths of his poetic experience, struggling over life and homeland, and intertwined in its worlds like a wounded and disappointed land, in a suggestive language that selected words, images, and meanings to suit the depth and shadows, hoping for a new dawn and a shady place. There is no doubt that the critic sought to penetrate the layers of poetry in his distant creative formation; starting from the quarrel of his land to the ashes of his cities at his night that his day may not erase, distances that separate, and hopes that are close to arrival, lived by the implicit critic in the halls of poetry that carries some of the halos of the continental formation, moving towards light, and dreams with the elegant clay and water so that it settles and touches broad hopes, and dreams overflowing in a white star, and four seasons.

Souls and distances grow apart between the poet who loves the land, and the heartbeats of the critic who is compassionate towards it after his feet once set foot on it, until he sees in its memory a fresh eagerness, and a delicious longing for its flowers and moons, which the brave men compete in their love for. From here and there, distances are folded, and the critic returns to the land of poetry, looking out with pride and arrogance on the sublime, the little hero, and the noble stone. The burning distances disappear to reveal behind them the farms of hope, songs of glory, and the homeland’s thorns. Since life is an open text that the poet fills with wishes and wounds, the critic has come to live it with the astonishment of the presumed text and the eloquence of the charged speech; with the heat of longing, the ember of love, and the palpitations of the heart. Thus, the critic has perfected the scalpel of digging into the luminous letters to stand on the rootedness of meaning, the completion of images, the flight of imagination, and the sweetness of the rhythm that organizes everything that his selected melodies create. He concluded by diving into the layers of language, appreciating the poet’s cultivation of hopeful life despite the violence of the conflict and the purity of blood. There is no doubt that the critic was impressed by the poet’s skill and accomplished artistry in what the Qasimi poem observed of creativity in which it is evident.