Los perros románticos

by Roberto Bolaño

«Porque el autor es chileno y hace a Parra personaje de un poema, parece inevitable hablar de "antipoemas"; porque es muy conocido como narrador, resulta lógico referirse a sus poemas narrativos. Ambas cosas responden a la realidad; no sería menos exacto decir que, en Bolaño, la narrativa en prosa es una forma, apenas enmascarada, de poema e incluso de antipoema. Sus ficciones, en modo alguno realistas salvo como metáfora y parodia, no ya de la realidad, sino de sí mismas, en la fecunda frontera ambigua en que colindan el pastiche y el homenaje, son tan poéticas como narrativos son sus poemas/antipoemas. Y, en cuanto poeta en verso, acaso sea, efectivamente, su aportación y su mérito mayor el hecho de reconquistar un territorio—el poema narrativo de apariencia coloquial?que parecía usufructuado o usurpado definitivamente por los epígonos del realismo de bolsillo, para los dominios de la aventura y de la imaginación a la vez cotidiana y visionaria.»

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Latin American, 20th Century, Literature, Spanish Literature, Collections

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with his poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño passed away. Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.

Reviews

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

L'avventura incessante

“Visto che ero pigmeo e giallo e di lineamenti gradevoli/e visto che ero furbo e non ero disposto a farmi torturare/in un campo di lavoro o in una cella imbottita/mi misero dentro questo disco volante/e mi dissero vola incontro al tuo destino”.

Con la poesia di Bolaño succede che ogni intenzione filologica si svuota sotto lo sguardo di un assassino. Resta il desiderio incontenibile di entrare in contatto, vicino e lontano, con le parole concrete: sconfitte, perdute, dimenticate. Antiletterario e vitale fino all'ultimo respiro era come poeta, e di letture sconfinate come detective. Ma non fa niente. Fino all'alba lavorava al suo incubo, alla preghiera, al delitto; accostava la guancia alla morte e si lasciava andare. Bolaño crede nell'innocenza dei senza volto, alla parola in fondo al mare, alla fantascienza nei ghiacci. Si vergogna e si burla del rossore. È un albero selvaggio con un ramo ira e un ramo desiderio. Ha animo di derelitto, ama la solitudine fuori dal gruppo, beve il tramonto insieme a un verme bianco che porta un cappello di paglia e una delicados tra le labbra. Nel nord del Messico, con le strade deserte e corporee, si mangia la disperazione degli amici, trasforma l'orrore in felicità. Magico, incantato. Poi si è sentito disgraziato e ha compreso cosa vuol dire avere un figlio. Gli occhi di Bolaño sono stati svuotati dal tempo, troppo scrutati, visibili solo a chi ama. La sua musa sussurrava non voglio morire mentre veniva e Bolaño scriveva. Il poeta prova molta nostalgia, non vive e non sa che dire. Cerca di estinguere la capacità di provare dolore ma fallisce, continua a sentire la sovranità del vuoto, vede ombre inconsistenti danzare nella pugnace vita dell'aria libera. Si incontrano anima e cuore; la paura sale dove nessuno vuole andare, nelle pianure labirintiche. Una donna gli ha salvato la vita, una volta. Gli amori perduti lo visitano nel buio; cosa cercate, si chiede, la mia ombra. Siamo esseri umani, figlio mio, quasi uccelli, eroi pubblici e segreti. La sua sconfitta racconta la legione di innocenti, il vagabondo sopporta le tempeste, a guardia dei sogni le sillabe brucianti. Ha fatto i mestieri più vili. L'esperienza è una truffa, la notte nera dell'anima cattura il deserto, in fondo Bolaño non crede al caso, solo alla pelle e alla volontà. Non sono come te, non so sopportare di tutto. Mi aggiro ancora tra le strade inutili del sogno, Bolaño, io rapinatore, stupratore, ruffiano inetto.

“A volte sogno che Mario Santiago/viene a prendermi con la sua moto nera./ E ci lasciamo dietro la città man mano/ che le luci vanno scomparendo/Mario Santiago mi dice che si tratta di una moto rubata, l'ultima moto/rubata per viaggiare nelle povere terre/del Nord, in direzione del Texas,/inseguendo un sogno innominabile,/inclassificabile, il sogno della nostra gioventù,/cioè il sogno più coraggioso di tutti/i nostri sogni. E allora/come faccio a rifiutarmi di salire sulla veloce moto nera/del nord e uscire a razzo su quelle strade/che un tempo percorrevano i santi del Messico,/i poeti mendicanti del Messico,/le sanguisughe taciturne di Tepito/O del quartiere Guerrero, tutti sullo stesso sentiero,/dove si confondono e si mischiano i tempi:/verbali e fisici, lo ieri e l'afasia./E a volte sogno che Mario Santiago/viene a prendermi, o è un poeta senza volto,/una testa senza occhi, né bocca, né naso,/solo pelle e volontà, e io senza chiedere nulla/salgo sulla moto e partiamo/sulle strade del nord, la testa e io/strana ciurma imbarcata su una rotta/miserabile, strade cancellate dalla polvere e dalla pioggia,/terra di mosche e di lucertole, cespugli rinsecchiti/e tempeste di sabbia, l'unico teatro concepibile/per la nostra poesia./E a volte sogno che la strada/presa dalla nostra moto o dal nostro desiderio/non inizia nel mio sogno ma nel sogno/di altri: gli innocenti, i beati,/i mansueti, quelli che per nostra disgrazia/non sono più qui. E così Mario Santiago e io/usciamo da Città del Messico che è il prolungamento/di tanti sogni, la materializzazione di tanti/incubi, e risaliamo gli stati/sempre verso nord, sempre sulla strada/dei coyote, e la nostra moto allora/è del colore della notte. La nostra moto/è un asino nero che viaggia senza fretta/nelle Terre della Curiosità. Un asino nero/che attraversa l'umanità e la geometria/di questi poveri paesaggi desolati./E la risata di Mario o della testa/saluta i fantasmi della nostra gioventù,/il sogno innominabile e inutile/del coraggio./E a volte mi sembra di vedere una moto nera/allontanarsi come un asino sulle strade/sterrate dello Zacatecas e del Coahuila, sul limitare/del sogno, e senza riuscire a comprenderne/il senso, il significato ultimo,/ne comprendo comunque la musica:/un'allegra canzone d'addio./E forse sono i gesti di coraggio quelli che/ci congedano, senza risentimento né amarezza,/in pace con la loro gratuità assoluta e con noi stessi./Sono le piccole sfide inutili – o che/gli anni e l'abitudine ci hanno permesso/di credere inutili – quelle che ci salutano/quelle che ci fanno cenni enigmatici con la mano,/in piena notte, sul lato della strada,/come figli nostri amati e abbandonati,/cresciuti da soli in questi deserti calcarei,/come lo splendore che un giorno ci attraversò/e che avevamo dimenticato./E a volte sogno che Mario arriva/con la sua moto nera in mezzo all'incubo/e partiamo verso nord,/verso i paesi fantasma dove dimorano/le lucertole e le mosche./E mentre il sogno mi trasporta/da un continente all'altro/attraverso una doccia di stelle fredde e indolori,/vedo la moto nera, come un asino di un altro pianeta/, tagliare in due le terre del Coahuila./Un asino di un altro pianeta/che è il desiderio sfrenato della nostra ignoranza,/ma che è anche la nostra speranza/e il nostro coraggio./Un coraggio innominabile e inutile, certo,/ma ritrovato ai margini/del sogno più remoto,/nelle partizioni del sogno finale,/sul sentiero confuso e magnetico/degli asini e dei poeti”.

Gianni Montieri Cani Romantici Minima Moralia
Giorgia Esposito Cani Romantici Minima Moralia

[D. Pow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberto Bolaño has achieved his primary fame in the US for two massive novelistic tomes, The Savage Detectives and 2666. I read The Savage Detectives and it knocked me on my ass with its mixture of lurid but poetic realism and its wheels within wheels plotting. Sex, decay, the noble aspirations of youth shot to shit by the cold hard slap in your face reality of make a buck late 20th Century Latin American and Spanish commerce. Dreams dying on the vine recalled through the sustained will and limitless talent of Bolaño. To make things more poetic, more utterly rock n’ roll, Bolaño was dying of liver disease as he delivered The Savage Detectives and the even more vast and ambitious 2666. Fucker was writing himself to death, entering a mad dance with immortality that he has apparently won in spades . Bolaño is the flavor of the moment,but it is a flavor that fills, he is justly regarded as one of the great exports of Latin America writing, and an earthy, crotch-grabbing counterpoint to the more ethereal voices of yor like Marquez and Fuentes.

I had 2666 on multiple Christmas lists, hoping in vain that it would appear under my festive tree, all bowed and ready for consumption. No such luck. The only book I got for Christmas was a history of the DC universe(which is cool in its own right and something Bolaño might’ve loved-I wonder if he was a Justice League or Avengers man?). But I was okay with it. I had barely absorbed the lessons, the soil and the essence of The Savage Detectives, I wasn’t ready yet to swallow, mainline, take in the harsh medicine of 2666. What I was ready for and bought for myself as a little post-Christmas, fuck I like you, Donnie treat- was Bolaño’s little book of poems The Romantic Dogs.

I read a lot of poems. I write poetry(and I don’t mean the simple mind rhyming shit I posted here today). I take poetry seriously. And I am honored to have read this book. The Bolaño you find here, is the author distilled down to his sheerest essence. This a dream log, an experiment in rhyme(at least in the original Spanish) a paean to the earth, to lost dreams, the sacred body, the breakdown of said body and the spilling of blood, sweat and semen in the name of holy Art. Bolaño took poetry seriously. Felt it was worth dying for. But his poetry wasn’t of the airy fairy Hallmark card variety. He was a poet of the descent, not a poet of the clouds, mountains and uninterrupted ascent into unimpeded spiritual progress. He was a poet keen on the experiences imbedded in flesh, a poet of dirty sheets, funky motel rooms, bad SF novels, women with unshaved legs and always the clock ticking, the clock ticking, fucking death in the room. Write. Write. WRITE. Until you drop. I can’t tell you how much I dig that. As a poet. As a cancer survivor. As somebody who has high blood pressure and a gimp liver. I dig that Bolaño’s entire late output was a hearty fuck you to Queen/King Death. And get this. Here is the punch line: Bolaño won. And anyone who samples his work wins too. This is a message from the outskirts, from the places we must go but haven’t been yet and it is also that most needful of cliches: the triumph of the human spirit. Bolaño’s victory is a victory for all of us, he’s what’s best in us and we all should be grateful to benevolent God or cold fate for the gift of his work.


Note: thanks to Alejandro Escovedo's wonderful album A Man Under The Influence that I listened to while I wrote this. Another great Latino with a shaky liver.

Thanks to Paul Bryant for Recovering this Deleted Review.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberto Bolaño era poeta. Su prosa era poética. Su poesía era narrativa. Una densa melancolía impregnaba cada palabra, cada figura. Inclusive sus alegrías eran tristes. Su lírica era elegíaca. La obra de Bolaño circula entre la identidad individual y la identidad colectiva latinoamericana. Nunca abandona la despedida romántica de una revolución estética que parece frustrada para siempre. Sin embargo, esa perseverancia luctuosa se transforma rápidamente en un cuerpo extraño, en una entidad difusa y refractaria. Creo que se puede sentir esa pérdida, pero no se puede entender. Sólo la empatía deja que la lectura prosiga. ¿De qué se despedía Bolaño? ¿De Chile? ¿De México? ¿De la belleza literaria auténtica? ¿Qué es eso irrecuperable que marcó el pulso anímico de su obra desde su juventud? En este aspecto, la despedida permanente de Bolaño se aproxima a la melancolía masiva de Federico Fellini, que tampoco se deja entender. Creo que Bolaño hacía literatura con su dolor universal, con su tristeza incurable tan personal como ubicua. No creo que los perros románticos sean los derrotados del boom latinoamericano, ese boom ya pasó, ya había pasado cuando Bolaño llegó a la madurez literaria. Tampoco creo que sean los sobrevivientes de la izquierda vencida de Latinoamérica. Al contrario, pienso que la melancolía de Bolaño es previa, personal antes que colectiva. La amplificación de ese núcleo hasta la conformación de una obra literaria magistral es justamente la clave de su arte. Pienso que este libro compendia todo Bolaño. Del Bolaño chileno, mexicano, español, creo que sobresale el mexicano. Su lenguaje es directo, luminoso, intenso. La lectura de Los Perros Románticos deja decenas de figuras en permanente fuga poética. Muy buen libro.

[Giuseppe Sirugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Roberto Bolaño tengo la idea de una persona que le encantaba escribir y a la vez ser criticado. El personaje empieza a vivir su tormento. Sin saber a qué enfrentarse. Probablmente era consciente de dejar un país para otro, pero lo que más se destacó de la mente fueron estos veinte años. Ello comenzaba a vivir su sueño. A veces empezó a vivir el amor. Sin embargo, el personaje empezó a vivir un hipotético laberinto y imágenes de dolor en ello encarnados que no ha sido capaz de olvidar: como la ciencia que estudia los crímenes y los criminales, Roberto en esas condiciones tendría que crecer.

Estaba lleno de miedo, pero se dejó ir, también Sin saber a dónde ir. Entonces, oyó una voz. Tal vez fue el interior, pero una vez oída esa voz comenzó a llorar: eso por que fue uno de los muchos veinteañeros desplegados en una dirección única.
Está claro que los poemas fueron como un sueño, en el que, la ilusión nocturna, da gusto con su balanceo suave. Roberto en esto momento intenta que los poemas entran en él: todo lo que es alrededor, es como cristalizado! Y cuando imagina todos claros, será porque el escritor se ha dado cuenta que está vagando en el superfluo.

Soni es una persona, y se encuentra en un bar.
Tenía vergüenza sí! Pero, primero percibió la sensación de vacío: tomó Soni por la espalda, descansando el pene en la cintura de su pantalone.
Los perros ladraban fuera del bar, mientras que el poeta en ese estado de percepción, o tal vez estado de embriaguez, estaba convencido que bajo de ellos había un cine. Sólo cuando eyaculó se dió cuenta que los cines eran dos. En ese momento siente de confiar algo a Soni, y le dice:
-Soni. El hombre no busca la vida.
Pero continuó a abrazarla por la espalda, sin embargo para penetrar rápidamente.
En el exterior de la barra los perros ladraban. Ella se separa del grupo. El poeta dice:
- Falta que te enferme. Soni, estamos perdidos.

Etcétera, etcétera. Probablemente, como también cree y escribe el poeta español Pere Gimferrer: sus ficciones son algo que realmente pertenecen a la vida del escritor. Sino a que, simplemente, estas ficciones se puede utilizar como metáforas o parodias de Roberto Bolaño.

De todas maneras, a partir de lo que escribe, sus ficciones se han convertido en un homenaje. A veces un homenaje un poco desordenado, que ya no pertenecen más a la realidad del escritor. Los torrentes de palabras escritas por Roberto Bolaño fueron como un molino que con su rueda ha tirado agua a si mismo. Lo que hizo el mismo escritor es el mayor mérito a él. Tal vez el mérito de haber conquistado cosas nuevas.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Bolano's poetry after being immersed in his fiction made it very difficult to disentangle my brain from his narrative voice(s), and seemingly unlimited storytelling capacity, and really HEAR these poems as distinct things. There are just too many echoes of passages and scenes from the novels, and his prose "stride" is so long and so tireless that stepping out of his novels and slowing down to read a half page of his verse was difficult.

But is the fault with me or the poems? I’m not quite sure. The poems can seem to offer little that can’t be found in the novels, but then from another angle can be seen as distillations of themes that run rampant in the novels. But my gut tells me that as a poet he was much more interested in posing as a poet, and ultimately never matured.

Having said that, there are a few poems in this collection that undoubtedly stand on their own as autonomous entities, most of which are the later ones (assuming as I am that the poems in the book are arranged chronologically). Some of the earlier poems are too Beat-like, too preoccupied with the role and personality/lifestyle of the poet, and not preoccupied enough with the words themselves and the structuring of those words. Some are just downright too vague and Romantic “songs of the soul”, or at least have elements of that -

my soul came upon
my heart

Are you serious? Come on! - but even many of the earlier poems that contain lines such as these still tell great stories, and create captivating scenarios, and so have their merits at least in those ways.

Then in the later poems something starts to happen, almost like he has become (more) unhinged and starts to take more chances and create some truly mysterious atmospheres. Maybe he had started to write his fiction and had opened up some inner floodgates. Here’s one of the shorter ones:

ROADSTER

The black automobile vanishes
around the curve of being. I
appear on the esplanade:
everyone will die, says the old guy
leaning against the façade.
Stop telling me stories:
my path is the path
of snow, not of seeming
taller, handsomer, better.
Beltran Morales died,
or so they say,
Juan Luis Martinez died,
Rodrigo Lira killed himself.
Philip K. Dick died
and now we only need
what is strictly necessary.
Come, slip into my bed.
Let’s caress all through the night
of being and its black car.

But even the effects of this poem are hard for me to disentangle from the effects I get from the novels. Or maybe 2666 is just too damn satisfying in itself for these poems to stand up to it. I really don’t know. In order for me to know I’d need to read a larger sampling, and wait for 2666 and its echoing hall of mirrors to exit my head at least a little bit.

I do wish Senor Bolano had lived at least a little bit longer because his poems seemed to be getting better and better. The last poem in the book is an excellent ancient Greek-like death poem, chiselled and potent, yet with enough airiness to allow free-play of thought and emotion.

Oh, and one gripe with the publisher. The Forrest Gander back blurb mentions “fist-fucking” and “feet-fucking”, but whatever poem he’s referring to is not in this book. What a shameless use of “scandalous” language on the part of the publisher in an attempt to sell a book.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only fever and poetry provoke visions.
Only love and memory.
*
[…] but love and your blood
made you take a step, uncertain but necessary, in the middle
of the night, and the love that guided that step is what saves you.
*
[…] what can I do
But remember the nice things
That once happened to me?
*

And maybe they’re gestures of courage, saying
Adios, without resentment or bitterness,
At peace with their total futility and with us ourselves.
They’re the little acts of defiance that are useless—or that
Years and custom made us think useless—waving hello,
Making enigmatic signals to us with their hands
In the middle of the night, on one side of the road,[...]
Like the radiance that one day stood in our path
And that we’d forgotten.
[...]
That is the unrestrained longing of our ignorance,
But that is also our hope
And our courage.
An unnamable and useless courage, for sure,
But re-encountered in the margins
Of the most remote dream,
In the partitions of the final dream,
In the confusing and magnetic trail
Of donkeys and poets.

[María Sánchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Ayer lo volví a leer, después de mucho tiempo)

Quedarse dormida con un libro abierto. Desnuda, hinchada como la isla que escribe Bolaño, llamando hijo a la nueva grieta, negando el aire frío de los muertos. Quedarse dormida amamantando a los perros románticos.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

these poems (all 11 + 11 + 11 + 11 of them) are hopefully the first of his many to be translated.


Rain

It's raining and you say it's as if the clouds
were crying. Then cover your mouth and speed up
your step. As if those emaciated clouds were crying?
Impossible. So then, why all this rage,
This desperation that'll bring us all to hell?
Nature hides some of her methods
in Mystery, her stepbrother. And so, sooner than
you think, this afternoon you consider
an afternoon of the apocalypse, will seem nothing but
a melancholy afternoon, an afternoon of loneliness lost
in memory: Nature's memory. Or maybe
you'll forget it. Rain, weeping, your footsteps
resounding on the cliff-walk. They don't matter.
Right now you can cry and let your image dissolve
on the windshields of cars parked along
the boardwalk. But you can't lose yourself.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh day, bleeding rain,
what are you doing in the soul of the abandoned,
day bleeding volition only barely glimpsed:
behind the reed curtain, in the mire,
with your toes sized up in pain
like a small shivering animal:
but you’re not small and you’re shivering from pleasure,
day cloaked in the might of volition,
frozen stiff in a mire that’s maybe not
of this world, barefoot in the middle of the dream that works its way
from our hearts toward our necessities,
from fury towards desire: curtain of reeds
that opens itself and dirties us and embraces us.

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another posthumous collection. This guy is a regular Tupac. And by that I mean dead, but still getting more done than me.

[Arelis Uribe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hasta ahora, había leído al Bolaño narrador, tan seco para armar frases afiladas, para construir estructuras, para presentar personajes oscuros, para describir Latinoamérica y sus jóvenes podridos por el fascismo. No había leído al Bolaño poeta y, ay, esa violencia tierna y salvaje está igual de presente, aparecen los poetas perdidos, el amor perdido, la vida y la esperanza perdidas. ¿Cómo describir esa sensación bolañesca? ¿Ese desahucio del mundo? ¿Ese desencanto en el dolor y la alegría? Esa sensibilidad dañada pero aún así cándida. Lindo, lindo, lindo. El primer poema se llama "Los perros románticos" y de ahí el título del libro, pero esos perros que nombra Bolaño justamente son —qué lindo esto— perros quiltros, perros callejeros, perros vagos, perros sucios, perros dulces, perros fieles. Eso es Bolaño, así se comporta en la literatura, en la vida. Es esquivo y entregado, resentido y generoso a la vez. Y el mejor Bolaño es el enamorado, el perro romántico Bolaño. Echa tanto de menos, a Mario Santiago, su juventud salvaje en el desierto mexicano, a sus amantes, a Parra. Extraña con las tripas, con el corazón rajado. Me gusta porque es simple, porque dice corazón, porque dice a su amada que es más hermosa "que el sol y las estrellas". En la boca de Bolaño ninguna palabra puede sonar cliché, aunque sea un cliché. También me gustó que varios poemas son "redondos", en el sentido de que el final siempre hace un guiño al arranque, volviendo ese pequeño universo algo coherente y cerrado en sí mismo (muy Jorge Teillier ese recurso). Y que hay poemas que se llaman "Los detectives perdidos" o "Los detectives helados" o simplemente "Los detectives" y la palabra salvaje crece por todo el libro, como si Bolaño hubiese agarrado un puño de palabras y las hubiese echado al viento sembrándolas en su poemario. Hermoso, hermoso, hermoso. Aunque subrayé el libro completo, no anotaré frases aquí, sólo diré: lean "Lupe" o "Musa" o "Atole". Ahí está el alma de este hombre que murió joven pero que vivió lo suficiente para convertirse en viejo.

[Iuliana Cazan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Dacă ne uităm, totuşi, cu raze X înăuntrul bărbatului
vedem oase şi umbre: petreceri-năluci
şi peisaje în mişcare ca privite dintr-un avion
în picaj. Vedem ochii pe care el i-a văzut, buzele
pe care degetele lui le-au mângâiat, un trup ivit
dintr-un anotimp al zăpezii. Şi vedem trupul gol,
exact aşa cum l-a văzut el, şi ochii şi buzele pe care le-a atins,
şi ştim că nu există leac.”

Excerpt From
Roberto Bolano
Cainii romantici
This material may be protected by copyright.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

third or fourth read of this, still excellent.

[sigurd]

non trovo molta differenza tra il bolano prosatore e il bolano poeta-
in entrambi, le noti dominanti sono il fervore e la nostalgia, la giovinezza e il sogno, la condivisione di un'esperienza. è raro che ci sia qualcosa di potente che accade a qualcuno senza che accada pure a qualcun altro; i personaggi di bolano non fanno in tempo a godersi la bellezza di qualcosa che devono subito condividerla; hanno bisogno di sentirla insieme ad altri; la possibilità di trovare sempre un interlocutore li rende felici e allo stesso tempo profondamente nostalgici. questa nostalgia nasconde la possibilità che prima o poi arriverà un momento in cui saranno soli e a nessuno potranno raccontare quello che hanno vissuto o visto o amato.

prendo una poesia a caso. non proprio a caso, perché è l'ultima di questa raccolta e mi ha fatto riflettere.

poeti troiani
ormai nulla di quanto poteva essere vostro
esiste più

né templi né giardini
né poesia

siete liberi
ammirevoli poeti troiani

non esiste una letteratura cartaginese o troiana. ci piacerebbe sapere cosa avrebbe scritto un poeta troiano sopravvissuto a troia. a loro è tolto il gusto di verseggiare sulle loro rovine. il sentimento dei vinti è cantato dai vincitori e come tale è un sentimento vero a metà. gli ammirevoli poeti troiani sopravvissuti potrebbero però, questo bolano lo tace perché è un poeta sentimentale e non epico, cantare le gesta dei greci, la loro gloria. questo sì sarebbe ammirevole.

[Angel Andues · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Qué decir?
Desde mi gusto personal, de las mejores obras poéticas de Bolaño, pero claro, es mi gusto personal.

Besis.

Os dejo el poema homónimo al mismo.

LOS PERROS ROMÁNTICOS

En aquel tiempo yo tenía veinte años
y estaba loco.
Había perdido un país
pero había ganado un sueño.
Y si tenía ese sueño
lo demás no importaba.
Ni trabajar ni rezar
ni estudiar en la madrugada
junto a los perros románticos.
Y el sueño vivía en el vacío de mi espíritu.
Una habitación de madera,
en penumbras,
en uno de los pulmones del trópico.
Y a veces me volvía dentro de mí
y visitaba el sueño: estatua eternizada
en pensamientos líquidos,
un gusano blanco retorciéndose
en el amor.
Un amor desbocado.
Un sueño dentro de otro sueño.
Y la pesadilla me decía: crecerás.
Dejarás atrás las imágenes del dolor y del laberinto
y olvidarás.
Pero en aquel tiempo crecer hubiera sido un crimen.
Estoy aquí, dije, con los perros románticos
y aquí me voy a quedar.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+

If you read about any review of Roberto Bolaño's work, you will quickly be told how he is a literary darling (see how long that took?). I don't know or care much about that. I don't read anything because it is popular in any sense. I know that many trusted GR friends love Mr. Bolaño's writing. That is all the popularity I need to induce me to read him.

Bolano is especially known for his chunkster novels, such as The Savage Detectives and 2666. Apart from a quick (and enjoyable) preview of The Savage Detectives, I have read nothing of Roberto Bolaño's. I began with his poetry for several reasons. 1) I like (love? need?) poetry, 2)this collection is much shorter than his chunksters and can be devoured in a sitting or two, and 3) when asked what made him a better poet than a novelist, Bolaño responded that "The poetry makes me blush less." If RB sees himself as a better poet, I'll start there (but really the reason is # 2).

This poetry is gritty, sexual, and often very moving (unless Hallmark is your idea of being moved). This is a collection of 44 poems. Most of these are barely over a page and 8 of them are 3+ pages. It is easy to pick up a poem or two and just ruminate on them throughout your day.

There are many poems that I enjoy as a whole in this collection. There are also instances where a word or two, a line, or a turn of phrase saved an individual poem for me or simply raised my opinion of this little book as a whole. I will admit that there is a lot of background in RB's writing that because I miss I feel unconnected to some of the poems. That is my lacking and takes nothing away from the poetry. Not surprising because poetry is "braver than anyone."

Some of the lines that stood out for me without quoting the entire poem:

From: Dirty, Poorly Dressed

Only fever and poetry provoke visions.
Only love and memory.
Not these paths or these plains.
Not these labyrinths.
Until at last my soul came upon my heart.
It was sick, it's true, but it was alive.
---

From: The Lost Detectives

A voice coming in like an arrow.
---

From: The Greek

. . .
Like a bright diabolical plan suspended in the sky
And in your eyes. Renegade of cities and of the Republic,
When I think that everything's lost, I'll trust in your eyes.
When compassionate defeat convinces us how useless it is to keep on fighting, I'll trust in your eyes.

From: The Worm

I saw him and told him get out of my tracks, you prick,
poetry is braver than anyone,
the soils watered with blood can suck my dick, the
evicted Mind
hardly rattles my senses.


--------
Poems in full--


The Romantic Dogs

Back then, I'd reached the age of twenty
and I was crazy.
I'd lost a country
but won a dream.
As long as I had that dream
nothing else mattered.
Not working, not praying
not studying in morning light
alongside the romantic dogs.
And the dream lived in the void of my spirit.
A wooden bedroom,
cloaked in half-light,
deep in the lungs of the tropics.
And sometimes I'd retreat inside myself
and visit the dream; A statue eternalized
in liquid thoughts,
a white worm writhing
in love.
A runaway love.
A dream within another dream.
And the nightmare telling me: you will grow up.
You'll leave behind the images of pain and of the labyrinth
and you'll forget.
But back then, growing up would have been a crime.
I'm here, I said, with the romantic dogs
and here I'm going to stay.


---
Resurrection

Poetry slips into dreams
like a diver in a lake.
Poetry, braver than anyone,
slips in and sinks
like lead
through a lake infinite as Loch Ness
or tragic and turbid as Lake Balaton.
Consider it from below:
a diver
innocent
covered in feathers'of will.
Poetry slips into dreams
like a diver who's dead
in the eyes of God.
----


[This one reminds me of Billy Collins a bit.]

The Front Line

In this poem, the front line holds together.
Faces white, hands
interlacing their bodies or in their pockets.
Some close their eyes or stare at the floor.
The others are sizing you up.
Eyes drained by time. They turn back'
toward each other after this pause.
The face-off only fortifies
the certitude of their union.

--------

Rain

It's raining and you say it's as if the clouds
were crying. Then cover your mouth and speed up
your step. As if those emaciated clouds were crying?
Impossible. So then, why all this rage,
This desperation that'll bring us all to hell?
Nature hides some of her methods
in Mystery, her stepbrother. And so, sooner than
you think, this afternoon you consider
an afternoon of the apocalypse, will seem nothing but
a melancholy afternoon, an afternoon of loneliness lost
in memory: Nature's memory. Or maybe
you'll forget it. Rain, weeping, your footsteps
resounding on the cliff-walk. They don't matter.
Right now you can cry and let your image dissolve
on the windshields of cars parked along
the boardwalk. But you can't lose yourself.
----

Other favorites: Self Portrait at Twenty Years, The Ghost of Edna Lieberman, Ernesto Cardenal And I, Muse, Mr. Wiltshire, and more!

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forgot to add this. Looking over the Bolano background since it's one of my assignments for class.

Read this awhile back, in an afternoon or two I think. It's a fine collection. Often wild, a little shocking, rich in language and imagery exact and voluble in equal measure. Like the prose but more adulatory and uninhibited, though of course its very strange to say that in respect to the dire, earthy, brimmingly apocalptic 2666, for one example.

It's funny- I totally get that he insisted on considering himself a poet, despite writing a bulk of novels and achieving what seems to be his greastest work in that genre. Sometimes the novelist is a failed poet (Faulkner, Melville, etc) and I can absolutely appreciate that p.o.v in the sense that it's not only the influence of another writer that propels you forward but it's the influence of another genre. Everybody "wants" to be somebody or something else- Conor Oberst wants to be Bruce Springsteen who wants to be Dylan who wants to be Woody Guthrie who wants to be Lead Belly who wants to be...uh...free?

But genre is the same way. Poetry can be such a hermetic, ascetic, rivitingly disciplined art form (fuck what the detractors say! If you aren't aquainted with it, you don't realize how hard it is to do. If you think that anyone can do it, well you're right about that, but like anything else anyone can "do it"- cook, sing, design with legos, perform surgery on a computer- but do it WELL, that's a whole different kettle of fish) and I don't blame anyone for swerving from it, the better to evolve and open their talent to the world. Fiction is poetry at 32 frames per second, if you know what I mean.

This isn't even to say that I think Bolano fails as a poet, but I think the captivating, wholly unique, ragingly raw, absurd, and vivid world he summons in his fiction is where his true talents thrived. Maybe swerving from poetry (vagabond existence put on hold because of young'uns to feed? I buy it, for a dollar. I don't think his wife initially married him because she thought he was going to trade stocks and buy a beachfront property in Malibu) was a way to sort of maintain an auxilary grasp on poetry and to simultaneously open a creative space which was seperate from it. I like the sound of that.

Very glad I was exposed to his writing, trendy as it might have been a few years ago, and there's really nothing quite like his voice- unavoidable, unmistakeable, and unmissable. Truly the mark of a true artist in any field, no?

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Podría escribir: "La poesía de Bolaño es el reflejo de su prosa."

Sin embargo ¿no es su prosa también poesía?

Entonces podría escribir con más seguridad: su escritura -etiquetada como poesía- me resulta una sombra de su escritura -etiquetada como prosa-. Aunque probablemente sea al revés.

[Monica]

Traveling changes your life. I don't want to forget about this one.

[Gilda Bonelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con tutto che ho l’idea di una persona alla quale piaceva scrivere, alla volta essere criticato anche, non sono capace a parlare male del poeta cileno. Nonostante che l’autore in alcune occasioni non lo intendo, come per esempio alcune poesie dello stesso libricino: Los perros románticos. O chi sa, se ciò è dovuto perché alcuni pezzi li ho preferiti interpretare e narrare diversamente, per esempio:
Il fatto è che il poeta iniziò a vivere il proprio tormento. Senza sapere a cosa stava andando incontro. O meglio, probabilmente, di quella circostanza e in quel periodo fu cosciente di lasciare un paese per un altro. Però, dalla sua mente, quello che a seguito si distaccò maggiormente furono i venti anni che aveva. Cominciava a vivere il proprio sogno. A volte, stava iniziando a vivere l’amore. Tuttavia, l’ipotetico labirinto e le immagini di dolore a lui incarnate, senza dubbio, sono state cose alle quali non fu in grado di scordare: come la scienza che studia i crimini e i criminali, Roberto da lì in avanti e in quella condizione avrebbe dovuto crescere.

Era pieno di paura, però si è lasciato andare ugualmente come se niente fosse. Senza sapere in che direzione avrebbe potuto proseguire. Allora, fu così che ascoltò una voce. A volte la udì dal proprio interno, però una volta ascoltata cominciò a piangere: ciò era dovuto perché fu uno dei molti ventenni proiettati in una direzione unica.

È chiaro che le poesie sono state come un sogno, nel quale, la illusione notturna da piacere col suo leggero cullare. Ed è in quel momento che Roberto cerca che le poesie entrino in lui: tutto quello che fa da contorno è come cristallizzato! E quando il poeta s’immagina che è tutto quanto chiaro, è perché lo stesso sta nel superfluo.

Soni è una persona, e si trova in un bar.
Aveva vergogna sì! Però, prima di tutto ha percepito una sensazione di vuoto: ha afferrato Soni per un braccio, lasciando riposare il pene nella cintura dei suoi pantaloni.
I cani fuori dal bar continuavano ad abbaiare, mentre il poeta in quello stato di percezione, o a volte di ubriachezza, era convinto che sotto di lui c’era un cinema. Solo quando ha eiaculato si è accorto che i cinema erano due. In quel momento si sente suggerire un qualcosa da Soni, gli dice:
- L’uomo non cerca la vita.
Però ha continuato ad abbracciarla sulle spalle, tuttavia per penetrarla e muoversi più rapidamente.
Dal lato opposto del bancone i cani stavano abbaiando. Lei si separa dal gruppo, e il poeta gli dice:
- Ci manca che ti ammali. Siamo già persi.

Etc, etc Probabilmente, come anche il poeta spagnolo Pere Gimferrer crede e scrive: le sue finzioni sono qualcosa che appartengono davvero alla vita dello scrittore. Sino a che, semplicemente, queste finzioni possono essere usate come metafore o parodie.
In tutti i modi, a prescindere da quello che scrive, le sue finzioni possono diventare un tributo, a volte un po' disordinato, che non appartiene più alla realtà dello scrittore. I torrenti di parole scritte da Roberto Bolaño erano come un mulino che con la sua ruota ha gettato l'acqua su se stesso. Quello che ha fatto, è il merito più grande a sé: forse il merito di aver conquistato nuove cose.

[julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

me gusta esta poesía anti-poesía, a lo nicanor parra, a lo Bolaño contando sus cuentos, pero en poesía. Muy divertido, tiene imágenes muy buenas.

[Rise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, Bolaño’s first collection of poetry translated by Laura Healy, is a collection spanning nearly two decades (1980 to 1998). There are forty-odd poems presented in a bilingual edition, which makes it more transparent for Spanish speaking readers to deduce meanings that are otherwise lost in translation.

Bolaño was first of all a poet before branching out as a prose writer. This forced change in literary form was motivated by the practicalities of the writing trade. His stature as a novelist had somewhat eclipsed his outputs in verse. Despite the forced division between the two, the continuity in his literary projects could be viewed as occupying its proper niche. Whether in free verse or in free indirect style, his distinctive voice was heard in suspense. He may have articulated in The Romantic Dogs, for example, what his other poet-characters might have uttered in their romantic dreams.

The first poem, the title poem, spoke of a dream won by the poet, aged twenty, after having just “lost a country.” It announced a calling, presumably a poetic one, and hinted that this collection will be autobiographical and will chart experiences of “growing up” which “back then … would have been a crime.”

Clearly this was a collection of love poems whose chosen emblem is a dog, man’s best friend but a lowly animal still. Politics and regimes, its cloak, were inescapable from the experience of poetry because the experience was a Latin American one. At the same time, the tone strived for freedom from the ideological banality of history because the experience was also universal and, in the light of the poet’s path-breaking prose, bridged the global post-national territory.

The poems were about ceaseless and aimless wanderings, encounters with friends and lovers, casual sex, poverty, isolation, and dialogues with established poets. The existential baggage was delivered through the oblique telling of the anecdotes and loves of the twenty/twenty-something poet. The idealism and innocence of youth were being tested.

It was notable that the poet’s efforts at a conscious artistry, for such a highbrow subject as poetry and a dangerous calling as living on the edge, was peopled with individuals coming from low standing (prostitutes, vagrants, homosexuals, emigrants, and exiles), lowlifes who in their pathetic fates and decadence were pictured sympathetically in poetry even as they also took centerstage in the novels. Clearly the inner workings of Bolañoland were metaphorical identifications with the oppressed and their progress in this hostile civilization.

The backdrop of the poet’s romances was the dark undercurrents of history (Nazism, dictatorship, torture, kidnapping), which was often likened to a horror movie. The escape was often through sexual trysts but the comfort they bring was ephemeral, sometimes fake, and oftentimes they did not really bring comfort at all.

An unforgettable love
Beneath the rain
Beneath the sky bristling with antennas in which
17th century coffers coexist
With the shit of 20th century pigeons.
And in the middle
All the inextinguishable capacity to inflict pain,
Undefeated through years,
Undefeated through loves
Unforgettable.
Yes, that’s what she said.
An unforgettable love
And brief,
Like a hurricane?
No, a love brief as the sigh of a guillotined head,
The head of a king or Breton count,
Brief like beauty,
Absolute beauty,
That which contains all the world’s majesty and misery
And which is only visible to those who love.
(“La Francesa”)

Another major theme in the poems was the figure of the “detective,” who fastidiously contemplated the scene of the crime. Frozen and lost, desperate and crushed, this portrait of the poet as a detective was also a romantic notion as it bordered on obsession. The detective, in various guises, was ubiquitous in the novels and novellas. In Distant Star, a detective was hired to hunt down an assassin poet who had been killing other poets. And who else will assist the detective but another poet commissioned to track down the whereabouts of the assassin by identifying his works in magazines and publications? In The Savage Detectives, the "detectives" were unidentified, but they could easily be the interviewers of the many characters (witnesses) in the second part of the book, or the interviewed people themselves, or the poets-characters who were in search of the missing poet. Also teeming with detectives was 2666, most notable of which were a neophyte detective who was accidentally plunged into the action of the novel, another who tracked down a notorious serial transgressor of churches, and the detectives who were investigating the serial killings and violation of women.

Poetry for Bolaño (and by extension, his other writings) was not so much a political statement but an ethical one. He was establishing the roots of his fiction and his art in various ways: as a detective, as a poet, and as a romantic. Each of these figures was the face of the same individual who sometimes found himself at a loss while contemplating the modern horror movie that was constantly unfolding in the theater of the living. The poet/detective/romantic was always on the road, in search of the completion of a lost humanity, his and those of his kind.

In poetry as in prose, Bolaño was first rate. The Romantic Dogs showed that the novelist’s essence dwells in his poetry. It was possible to dissociate the poems from his novelistic writings, but the writings took on new meanings when read side by side with the poetry. Even if the book of poems was intended to be self-contained, its echoes and reverberations in the novels gravitated toward the comprehension of an incomplete and unfinished poetic universe. It may be entirely justified to treat the poems without reference to the torrential works of prose. But to do so was to remove the fuel from the fiction machine, to admit the defeat of true poetry.

The defeat of true poetry, which we write in blood.
And semen and sweat, says Darío.
And tears, says Mario.
Though none of us is crying.
(“Visit to the Convalescent”)

Yet the defeat was still one of two options. With so much disappointments and lost loves, the book could have chosen to end with the lost idealism of youth, with the loss of innocence, or with the plain lost of youth. But one could feign to detect a positive note ringing in the last poem “With the Flies”:

Poets of Troy
Nothing that could have been yours
Exists anymore

Not temples not gardens
Not poetry

You are free
Admirable poets of Troy

Perhaps a declaration of freedom was the only necessary thing for the modern poet to survive damning upheavals. His lost possessions were irretrievable, yet his verses were still intact. Here to stay with the romantic dogs.



(from a review posted in my blog 12/2009)

[withdrawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5 stars

I started reading Roberto Bolaño’s The Romantic Dogs largely because it is in a bilingual English/Spanish format and I want to keep up my Spanish language abilities (with little success). I am also a Bolaño fan.

Anyone familiar with the author’s novel The Savage Detectives will quickly recognize many of the concerns of the novel reflected in the style and voice of the poems. As the novel is semi-autobiographical so are the poems. Bolaño also maintains his self-centred view through many of the poems as well as his continued attempts to create his own myth as a revolutionary. It may be that he was trying to create Bolaño the revolutionary poet to substitute for Bolaño who missed the revolution in Chile, his home country.

His poetry is quite idiosyncratic and focused on himself. Certain of the poems come across as almost adolescent in their self centredness and tendency to want to shock with harsh images and words. When he turns his focus on others, however, he shows, again in his own idiosyncratic way, a degree of empathy and helplessness in the face of another’s pain.

In the poem Lupe, (also a character from The Savage Detectives) Bolaño tells of a 17 year old prostitute who has watched her child die “for not keeping up her bargain with la Virgen./ La Virgen carried off the little angel, payment for a broken promise”. The poet’s response: “I didn’t know what to say./ …And so I stayed quiet and thought about the eerie feel/ emerging from the silence of that hotel.”

Similarly in La Francesa, the woman speaks of “…what happened to her/ Between the ages of 15 and 18./ A pornographic horror movie”. Again, the poet, the man of words is silent. “And I didn’t know what to say,/ I really didn’t know what to say”.
There is an unevenness in the choice of poems in this book and we are not told who chose them or what time period they were written over. This is a real weakness in the book as it leaves me with too many questions which have nothing to do with the poetry itself. Similarly, I would have liked to see an introduction by the translator, Laura Healy. She has, for the most part, done a wonderful job of reflecting the Spanish (from my somewhat dubious point of view) but I would like to know what lies behind some of her choices in phrasing and translating certain words.

Bolaño preferred to see himself primarily as a poet. Anyone wanting to know him better, wanting to better understand his novels would do well to spend time with this small collection of forty-four poems.

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Como cuando uno sueña que mata a una persona
que no acaba nunca de morir.
O como aquel otro sueño: el del tipo que evita un atraco
o una violación y golpea al atracador
hasta arrojarlo al suelo y allí lo sigue golpeando
y una voz (¿pero qué voz?) le pregunta al atracador
cómo se llama
y el atracador dice tu nombre
y tú dejas de golpear y dices no puede ser, ése es mi nombre,
y la voz (las voces) dicen que es una casualidad,
pero tú en el fondo nunca has creído en las casualidades.
Y dices: debemos de ser parientes, tú eres el hijo
de alguno de mis tíos o de mis primos.
Pero cuando lo levantas y lo miras, tan flaco, tan frágil,
comprendes que también esa historia es mentira.
Tú eres el atracador, el violador, el rufián inepto
que rueda por las calles inútiles del sueño".
Junto al acantilado, pág. 65-66.

[Rananda Satria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pikiranmu kusut karena banyak yang mesti dikerjakan. Kamu tidak tau mesti mulai dari mana. Kamu mencoba untuk mengawali dengan mengerjakan anu, tapi prosesnya tidak semulus yang dibayangkan. Sudah berminggu-minggu begini. Rasa bosan, malas, dan kesia-siaan, kamu pikir, adalah hasil dari apa yang akan kamu kerjakan. Di sela-sela itu, kamu mati-matian mencari inspirasi untuk melecut semangatmu. Kamu memilih sebuah buku puisi yang pernah kamu baca setahun lalu. Salah satu puisinya menjadi lockscreen ponselmu. Apa tujuannya? Apa kamu mau api itu tetap menyala? Namun, api tersebut adalah puisi atau sang penyair?

[M. Malmierca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los perros románticos. Roberto Bolaños en estado puro. Realidad manipulada por la imaginación del autor, por su crítica y su melancólica visión del mundo y las personas, sobre todo en su juventud. No sé si considerarlos anti poemas o no, pero destilan cierta singularidad. También su maravillosa cadencia rítmica es un mérito a tener en cuenta. Se puede concluir que Bolaños el un buen poeta así como es un magnífico escritor.

[anda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneori mă întorceam la mine
să văd ce mai face visul: statuie eternizată
în gânduri lichide,
un vierme alb zvârcolindu-se
în iubire.
O iubire nebună.
Un vis înăuntrul altui vis.
Și coșmarul îmi zicea: vei crește.
Vei lăsa în urmă imaginile durerii și ale labirintului
și vei uita.
Dar pe atunci, să crești era totuna cu o crimă.
Sunt aici, am zis, cu câinii romantici
și aici o să rămân.

[Charlie]

Bad poems by a great writer.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

En aquel tiempo tenía yo treinta años, comenzé a leer a Bolaño y reafirmé mi locura...

[María José · Rating 3 out of 5]

No sé nada de poesía y no me gusta mucho, tbh; pero Bolaño