The Romantic Dogs

The Romantic Dogs is a collection of poems by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. It was published in 2006. The bilingual edition, with English translations by Laura Healy, was published by New Directions in 2008.

These 43 poems span nearly twenty years, from 1980 to 1998, embracing a wide variety of topics. Bolaño's obsession with detectives is evident in several poems, but the collection suggests other preoccupations, as in the poem "Godzilla in Mexico."

Reception

Forrest Gander, writing for The Nation, described Bolaño's work as "A witty, sardonic poetry, the likes of which could be called 'unimproved'—lacking the polish of a shiny commodity. With Bolaño, we encounter not only 'fist-fucking' but 'feet-fucking' in a poem that also mentions Pascal, Nazi generals, Shining Path bonfires, and a teenage hooker. With Bolaño, the explicit description of a sexual encounter is fragmented by temporal disjunctions, heuristic leaps of thought and a barking dog; in the end, God and an author show up. . . . The poems shine their beery light on life's romantic dogs: dreamers, detectives, and poets who do double time as saints and martyrs."

External links

• The Romantic Dogs at Complete Review. Includes links to reviews.
• The Triumph of Roberto Bolaño The Romantic Dogs review from The New York Review of Books
• "The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño" by Levi Stahl, The Quarterly Conversation
• "The Romantic Dogs by A.W. Allworthy, Ralph Magazine