SOURCE: "Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Poesias," in Three Twentieth-Century Portuguese Poets, Witwatersrand University Press, 1960, pp. 20-31.

Parker discusses the techniques Sa-Carneiro utilizes in Dispersão and Indicios de ouro and notes that these poetic cycles reflect the author's personal sense of misery and despair.

The short life of [Mário de Sá-Carneiro] and particularly the brevity of his literary life, make it possible to give a fuller picture of his poetry. Mário de Sá-Carneiro was born in Lisbon in 1890. His father was then an officer in the Portuguese military engineers. At an early age he lost his mother, who was by all accounts an angelic creature; her death was perhaps the most tragic event in the poet's life, for though his early years were surrounded by the comforts of a well-to-do household, he missed the unselfish tenderness of a mother's love, a tenderness which...