Time, Voice, and Self in Maha Al-Attoum’s Poetry: A Semantic–Linguistic Study of Present Tense Negation and Affirmation in Imra’at Al Waqt

Abstract

This study examines how present tense verbs in their negative and affirmative forms function semantically and stylistically in Maha Al-Attoum’s poetry collection Imra’at Al‑Waqt (The Woman of Time). By tracing the poet’s alternation between negation and affirmation, the research seeks to uncover how verbal choices construct psychological states, negotiate temporality, and articulate a female poetic voice within contemporary Arabic literature. Adopting a descriptive–analytical approach, the study first identifies instances of negated and affirmed present tense verbs across the collection, then analyzes their dominant semantic implications. The analysis is organized into two main sections: negative present tense verbs and their meanings, and affirmative present tense verbs and their meanings, each further divided according to recurring thematic patterns. An introductory section foregrounds the central role of the verb in Arabic grammar and explains why the present tense is particularly significant for expressing continuity, expectation, and inner experience in poetic discourse. The findings reveal that Al‑Attoum’s shifting use of negation and affirmation in the present tense is closely tied to psychological nuance: it encodes tension between despair and hope, constraint and agency, absence and presence. These verbal patterns help to disclose the poet’s stance toward self, time, and surrounding reality, demonstrating how grammatical choices participate in meaning-making and subject formation in modern Arabic poetry. The study concludes by calling for more applied grammatical and semantic analyses of literary texts, arguing that such work not only revitalizes the study of Arabic grammar but also deepens our understanding of how formal linguistic structures shape literary expression and cultural imagination.