Hanna A Saadah

When You Happened To Me Hanna A Saadah

This eclectic book of verse was written over a span of ten years, between 2005 and 2015. It explores the seven dimensions of human emotions: Love, Joy, Grief, Passion, Faith, Disillusionment, and Awe. The seven recurrent themes that permeate the work are: Relationships, Life, Death, Nature, Beauty, Age, and Reason. There are a total of 117 poems, divided into four arbitrary categories: Life and Love (29 poems), Sonnets and Villanelles (42 poems), Songs (18 poems), and Free Verse (28 poems). Every poem is introduced by a few lines, so that the reader will get to shake hands with each poem as if it were a real person. Philosophy of life is the leitmotif, which repeats its tireless refrain throughout the entire work, using music, rhyme, alliteration, and rhythm to recite its metered verses. Poetry is to be slowly sipped like good wine, not gulped like beer. To get at the heart of poems, one must read and re-read them, contemplatively and carefully. Poems can warm the heart only if the reader snuggles underneath their colorful quilts, savors their essences, hums them to himself, and then recites them aloud to hear their inner music. Once one gets to know a poem, the poem becomes a dear friend with whom one shares intimate feelings and finds myriad meanings. As Walt Whitman said: "Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meanings of poems?"