Misanthrope, provocative, arrogant, twisted, spiteful, intrusive, abusive, cruel, misogynistic, mean, are terms rarely used to describe the author of a book when seeking to persuade the reading public that they have in their hands a work filled not only with malice and disenchantment, but of deep beauty and compassion. They are, however, only a sample of the profusion of epithets used by the friends and enemies (over time, indistinguishable) of Edward Dahlberg. Within an uneven work, which includes cumbersome and bland books, and notable volumes such as Do These Bones Live, Flea of ​​Sodom or Because I Was Flesh (of which James Laughlin, its editor, said: The Atrocious Edward Dahlberg is the most author ungrateful that I have published, but it is a masterpiece), this volume is perhaps the best entry point to the writing of the self-defined as the enfant terrible of that farce of Black Mass we call North American literature. In Reasons of the Heart, Dahlberg, who understood writing as a religious vocation, counted his powerful verbal current in a group of philosophical aphorisms that surprise not only for their virulence, their sharp humor, their pessimism bordering on a broken romanticism, but for their intelligence , his sullen elegance and his reluctant commiseration for a species that he secretly exalted. In 1966, eleven years before his death, Dahlberg would write: I never amassed a single handful of vowels and consonants for Mammon or that other whore called fame. I intend to continue as before, sowing dragon's teeth when necessary, planting affection in the souls of my anonymous readers.