Useless poetry: brief analysis of Luís Quintais’ poetry

Abstract

Marked in gray, pervaded by a vague presence of melancholy, Luís Quin­tais’ verses present us a world framed by fragmented images, opaque and quotidian, whose space and time are interrupted by voids. But what are these voids? These pages, which came from such a question, in their eager to seek answers, encounter another question: after all, why do many of the current poetics, including the poetry of which Luís Quintais is part, attract attention to the word, brushing on their verses a reflection of the poetic language and their (in)utility and power of resistance against the society of their time? Thus, when we read Luis Quintais’ poetry, we see that the metalinguistic function is vital to understand the feeling of emptiness in his poems which, in their turn, take us to a reflection on language, memory and history.