The Romantic Dogs, a bilingual collection of forty-four poems, offers American readers their first chance to encounter phenomenon Roberto Bolano as a poet: his own first and strongest literary persona. (When asked, "What makes you believe you're a better poet than novelist?" Bolano replied: "The poetry makes me blush less." These poems--intimate, moving, and witty, wide-ranging in form and length--have appeared in magazine's such as Harper's, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, The Believer, Boston Review, Poetry, Soft Targets, Tin House, Circumference, and A Public Space. Bolano has been hailed for "sheer brilliance" (The San Francisco Chronicle) and as "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag). His poetic voice is like no other: