Roberto Bolaño's own preferred literary persona was as a poet and Tres is his most inventive and bracing collection.
As the title implies, the collection is composed of three sections. 'Prose from Autumn in Gerona', a cinematic series of prose poems, slowly reveals a subtle and emotional tale of unrequited love by presenting each scene, shattering it, and piecing it all back together, over and over again. The second part, 'The Neochileans', is a sort of On the Road in verse, which narrates the travels of a young Chilean band on tour traveling north from Chile to Peru and Ecuador. Finally, the collection ends with a series of short poems that take us on 'A Stroll Through Literature' reminding us of Bolaño's masterful ability to walk the line between the comically serious and the seriously comical.
In verse, as in prose, Bolaño leads us on journeys through a surreal landscape of exile, longing, and nostalgia.
