Cultural Criticism: An Applied Study of Poem “Words” by Nizar Qabbani

This study addresses the concept of literary imagination within cultural criticism, considering that cultural criticism constitutes a distinct intellectual discipline with an analytical methodology for studying culture from a socio-political perspective, extending beyond mere aesthetic concerns. The theoretical foundations of cultural criticism have represented a major turning point in the global critical landscape, shifting the focus toward deconstructing implicit cultural systems and revealing the intellectual and social structures concealed behind poetic discourse. From this perspective, a text is not read merely as a linguistic construct, but as a carrier of a cultural vision that expresses a system of values, power relations, and representations of the self and the other within its historical and social context. The poem “Kalimat” by serves as a rich model for applying cultural criticism, as it encompasses semantic dimensions that go beyond emotional lyricism to question the cultural structure of the relationship between men and women and to reshape the representation of the female in modern poetic discourse. Qabbani does not merely present a personal emotional experience; he reconfigures the concept of love as a cultural stance that intersects with issues of freedom, identity, the body, and symbolic power.The significance of this study lies in its aim to uncover the implicit cultural systems within the poem, particularly those related to masculinity and femininity, self-centeredness, and the use of language as a tool either to reproduce domination or to resist it. This research seeks to approach “Kalimat” through a cultural-analytical lens, tracing its semantic and symbolic structures and revealing the cultural systems underlying its aesthetic expression. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the dialectical relationship between text and reality, and between poetry and culture. Ultimately, the study broadens the scope of reading poetry, portraying it as a cultural discourse that reflects the transformations of contemporary Arab society and reshapes its aesthetic and intellectual consciousness.