Douglas Diegues: metapoetry and other issues

Abstract

This article presents the analysis of some sonnets of the Brazilian contemporary poet Douglas Diegues from the selection of poems in which the making of metapoetry is manifested as a sine qua non condition of the aesthetic project of the author. Following the metapoetry concept, it appears that the awareness of a poetic making process takes place in Diegues' poems at several levels: the update of the classic sonnet form in his Shakespearean variant; the creation and use of a mixed language, portunhol selvagem (portunhol salbaje); the recurrence of some figures in his poems, such as “esperma” ("sperm") and "belleza" ("beauty"); the critical use of everyday experiences in favor of a work whose integrity creates a style à la Diegues. Thus, we sought to verify to what extent the production of Diegues stands out and differs from the Brazilian contemporary poetic production through the experimentations in and with language.