Is poetry useless? Answer in three voices in the current stage of the discussion

Abstract

In the field of the Spanish poetry of the eighties, the representative voices of Luis García Montero, Jorge Riechmann and Roger Wolfe serve to answer, from three diverse ideological points of view, the denying opinions of the possibilities of the poetry as useful instrument to the society. The poetic of García Montero emblems the position of those who find in links and forms of complicity the last key of the utility of poetry; the proposal of Jorge Riechmann illustrates the paradoxes of those who opt for the linguistic rupture as a subversion way which accompanies the social practice in the undermining of the established order; the approach of Roger Wolfe represents the moral ambiguity of a project that, if initially does not confer on the word any kind of positive achievement, practices a crude testimonial poetry that becomes a vigorous critical method of the reality.