Book review: The Romantic Dogs
By Roberto Bolaño Translated by Laura Healy Reviewed by Juliet Wilson Published by Picador Roberto Bolaño was a Chilean novelist and poet, who travelled and lived in Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. He saw himself primarily as a poet, setting up infrarrealista an anarchic school of poetry. He later turned to writing novels as a way of supporting his family. The Romantic Dogs , a collection of his poetry written between 1980 and 1999, was published in 2006 and this bilingual edition, with translations by Laura Healy came out in 2008. The poetry is varied in style and content, some of the poems are long narratives, while others are fragments, some are clearly inspired by political events, while others seem to be based on personal experiences. The poet’s obsessions quickly become clear, particularly in a sequence of five poems about detectives. ‘I dreamt of frozen detectives in the great refrigerator of Los Angeles.’ from Dirty Poorly Dressed ‘Detectives who stare at Their open pa...