"Never Say I": Inscriptions and Erasures of the Self in Queer Poetry in Spanish and Portuguese

Abstract

This essay examines a variety of queer-themed poems in Spanish and Portuguese (by Abigael Bohórquez, Diana Bellessi, Mário Cesariny, Juan Carlos Bautista and others), with particular attention to the treatment of "tradition" or poetic convention: the first examples considered, for instance, are modern rewritings of forms from medieval Iberian traditions. The central theme of the essay is the erasure of the self ("never say I," as Gide recommended to Proust), a contradictory injunction in poems that assert the presence of a homosexual subject.