Linguistics and Poetry: A dialogue with Dr. Mazen Al-Waer

Abstract

In an interview with Dr. Mazen Al-Waer, professor of modern linguistics at Umm Al-Qura University: 1- Adonis’s modernity is chaotic because he did not delve into the depths of Arab or international heritage either. 2- Mahmoud Darwish is a unique case in the Arab world, and what he presented amounts to the concept of the Arabic poem in terms of content, not form. 3- Every Arab feels that what Nizar Qabbani did is an unshakable part of it, because he did not bring modernity out of thin air, nor from Western modernist principles devoid of their contents.

4- Modernity in the Arab world is chaotic because it arose from a vacuum and did not take into account what the ancient Arabs did and what other world heritages did. 5- The authors of activism poetry took from Al-Khalil’s meters what was appropriate to their modest poetic capabilities and called their depiction of reality through the game of language free poetry. 6- We do not reject the prose poem, but we do not consider it poetry or a poem. Rather, it is literary speech that depicts reality through the game of language, and not the rhetoric of poetry. 7- We must make use of the scientific tools found in the natural sciences so that they become an integral part of the scientific method for studying language.