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cdelorenzo's review against another edition
5.0
“Breve como la belleza
La belleza absoluta
La que contiene toda la grandeza y la miseria del mundo
Y que sólo es visible para quienes aman”.
“nunca serás un hombre sabio, vaya, ni siquiera un hombre
razonablemente inteligente, pero el amor y tu sangre
te hicieron dar un paso, incierto pero necesario, en medio
de la noche, y el amor que guió ese paso te salva”.
“Leer es aprender a morir, pero también es aprender a ser feliz, a ser valiente”.
La belleza absoluta
La que contiene toda la grandeza y la miseria del mundo
Y que sólo es visible para quienes aman”.
“nunca serás un hombre sabio, vaya, ni siquiera un hombre
razonablemente inteligente, pero el amor y tu sangre
te hicieron dar un paso, incierto pero necesario, en medio
de la noche, y el amor que guió ese paso te salva”.
“Leer es aprender a morir, pero también es aprender a ser feliz, a ser valiente”.
adamz24's review against another edition
5.0
I didn't want to be done reading this. The good news is that although I've turned the last page, and closed this book that has been haunting my dreams and memories and everyday experiences ever since I opened it, I do not feel like I'm done reading it.
I struggle to write eloquently or seriously about Bolano, mainly because a lot of his writing's impact (whether poetry or fiction) on me is pure gut-level shit. I tried writing a review of 2666 once, and as soon as I was done I trashed it. I can talk about this guy. I can ramble, even, but I can't really explain what I really dig about this guy's stuff, outside of just repeating the usual stuff you read about his writing. I guess one thing people don't often enough mention is how good a poet and writer of sex Bolano is. It's always rendered subjectively, heavy on sensuality, on the sense impression, but somehow also cerebral, or at least serious, real emotional. He can write about somebody's asshole for a full page and I'm still just going, "wow, that's pretty," y'know?
So, instead, a list of my favourite poems from this collection:
Occasionally it Shook
The Redhead
Like a Waltz
Never Alone Again
There Are No Rules
Summer
The Redhead (another one)
Latin American Poetry
The Detectives
The Lost Detectives
The Frozen Detectives
Tough Guys Don't Dance...
Lupe
La Francesca
Eyes
Rain
The Romantic Dogs
Twilight in Barcelona
Roberto Bolano's Return
A note on the translation(s): because this includes prose poems translated earlier by Natasha Wimmer, reading The Unknown University really makes clear to us English-only philistines that our experience of Bolano's writings is heavily dependent on these two women. Wimmer's translated most of the fiction, I'm pretty sure (by page count, anyway, and I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Bolano stuff I haven't really dug was the Chris Andrews-translated stuff, though it's not bad), and Healy all the poetry except the aforementioned prose poems. And reading both translators at work in the same book, I definitely got a picture of how both went about their work, and how the similarities and differences etc. in our English reading of this poetry and the prose fiction depend on the personal styles of Healy and Wimmer respectively. I do think my awe of Bolano's fiction in English is somewhat dependent on Wimmer's work as translator. Healy's done some terrific work, too. Among my favourite couple lines from The Romantic Dogs, repeated here, is "And quick strokes of other less intimate adventures/Flashed in her wounded eyes like fireflies." Those lines are pretty different in the Spanish, and, working with a limited knowledge of Spanish, looking at the Spanish lines, it seems like Healy's done a great job of distilling what those lines were about and turning 'em into real pretty lines of English. So that's one example of Healy being pretty great too.
So yeah, credit to Roberto, and to Natasha and Laura. It's been seriously great reading this stuff.
I struggle to write eloquently or seriously about Bolano, mainly because a lot of his writing's impact (whether poetry or fiction) on me is pure gut-level shit. I tried writing a review of 2666 once, and as soon as I was done I trashed it. I can talk about this guy. I can ramble, even, but I can't really explain what I really dig about this guy's stuff, outside of just repeating the usual stuff you read about his writing. I guess one thing people don't often enough mention is how good a poet and writer of sex Bolano is. It's always rendered subjectively, heavy on sensuality, on the sense impression, but somehow also cerebral, or at least serious, real emotional. He can write about somebody's asshole for a full page and I'm still just going, "wow, that's pretty," y'know?
So, instead, a list of my favourite poems from this collection:
Occasionally it Shook
The Redhead
Like a Waltz
Never Alone Again
There Are No Rules
Summer
The Redhead (another one)
Latin American Poetry
The Detectives
The Lost Detectives
The Frozen Detectives
Tough Guys Don't Dance...
Lupe
La Francesca
Eyes
Rain
The Romantic Dogs
Twilight in Barcelona
Roberto Bolano's Return
A note on the translation(s): because this includes prose poems translated earlier by Natasha Wimmer, reading The Unknown University really makes clear to us English-only philistines that our experience of Bolano's writings is heavily dependent on these two women. Wimmer's translated most of the fiction, I'm pretty sure (by page count, anyway, and I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Bolano stuff I haven't really dug was the Chris Andrews-translated stuff, though it's not bad), and Healy all the poetry except the aforementioned prose poems. And reading both translators at work in the same book, I definitely got a picture of how both went about their work, and how the similarities and differences etc. in our English reading of this poetry and the prose fiction depend on the personal styles of Healy and Wimmer respectively. I do think my awe of Bolano's fiction in English is somewhat dependent on Wimmer's work as translator. Healy's done some terrific work, too. Among my favourite couple lines from The Romantic Dogs, repeated here, is "And quick strokes of other less intimate adventures/Flashed in her wounded eyes like fireflies." Those lines are pretty different in the Spanish, and, working with a limited knowledge of Spanish, looking at the Spanish lines, it seems like Healy's done a great job of distilling what those lines were about and turning 'em into real pretty lines of English. So that's one example of Healy being pretty great too.
So yeah, credit to Roberto, and to Natasha and Laura. It's been seriously great reading this stuff.
jfl's review against another edition
3.0
The second time around reading this volume and I still find Bolano's novels superior to his poetry.
fearandtrembling's review against another edition
At the moment I can safely say I prefer The Savage Detectives, which is the only book of his I've read so far. Although many of the poems are funny, frank, bawdy, and capacious in the manner of his prose in TSD, the poems don't grab me. Or I don't get them. There's no pull, no push, just tedium. I'm really not sure why but it feels like an effort to read at this point in time.
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