I fly then stop
I fly then chirp
Inside my made-up world, I can go very far
Not a song
not an echo
but a faraway place where there’s only freedom
I’m bird, bird flying in that place
(from “10 Centimeters,” page 37)
With every book in Kim Hyesoon’s canon, bars are raised, ambitions are explored, and readers are gifted with incredible and incredibly challenging reinventions of poetry. Phantom Pain Wings is the next step in this poet’s journey, and it is the most enthralling book by Kim Hyesoon to date. Every aspect of the experimental, feminist South Korean writer’s voice is captured here, taken well beyond what we have seen translated into English thus far.
At 208 pages, this is a massive collection contributing to global experimental poetry, and monumental in scope. Previous works by Kim Hyesoon have been much shorter, but the poems have offered depths through their density. Now we have something magnificent, a collection that extends the poet’s field of work while not letting up on the poems’ quintessential multilayered quality. Despite its size and the investment for the reader, Phantom Pain Wings is a collection that should be on everyone’s must-read list: as the poet is transformed into / out of / through the bird, so too will the reader find much to explore between the bright pink covers.
I become bird moremore
I become glimpsebird, suddenbird, briefbird
I become bird on a jam-packed subway train
I become bird with a brain a thousand times smaller than mine
I become trembling bird
between teeth-grinding shoes swarming
onto the train’s floor like a pack of rats
(from “Bird’s Diary, page 106”)
The structure of Phantom Pain Wings makes the book look simple and straightforward: four sequences of poetry, an essay, and a translator’s closing piece. But the simplicity is deceptive. The first handful of sections of the book are subtly linked in theme but tackle severely different themes. “My Beloved Parting,” “I Sharpen the Forest and Write a Letter,” “Community of Parting,” and “Why Do Women Think That Animals Can Speak?” are each poignant and engaging in their own ways, but when together make for an epic read.
The book proceeds with “Bird Rider: An Essay,” which magnifies the poet’s themes, decisions, and processes, and the book concludes with Don Mee Choi’s “Translator’s Diary,” where we gain further insight into how and why the language reads as it does. All these sections feed one another, the links striking and bold, co-empowering their counterparts and turning this book into a body of awe, a structure systems and limbs.
I can’t remember where I left my wings
I can’t breathe unless I’m up in the air
(from “Birds’ Funeral,” page 43)
The sections of poetry resemble past works by Kim Hyesoon, with bits of performance and ars poetica blended into seemingly traditional verse, but it is worth noting the size of each section: each could be their own book. To summarize all of them here is impossible. The opening section sets the stage for polymorphic exhibitions that we know well from Kim Hyesoon’s previous writing.
“My Beloved Parting” is a new take on the transformation of beings, in this case the merge of woman and animal, in this case woman and the bird, complete with its many metaphorical possibilities. The point of departure is filled with many things, including catharsis: the complexities of leaving to arrive are explored here and throughout Phantom Pain Wings, as the title suggests: there is memory and there is grief and there is trauma, and to depart one state of mind or body does not mean former worlds are forgotten.
I’m five thousand shadows. I’m bird — there are only birds between the gaps, between birds. At times I’m alive, at times I drop dead.
(from “Tyrannus Melancholicus,” page 58)
As the book unfolds, we see glimpses of the psycho-emotional processing of the poet, whose relationships with her parents are matched with her relationships with South Korea, its government, its sense of self, it as a nation state wracked with inequity and imposition. Subtle address of oppression and torment are integrated throughout Phantom Pain Wings, with the consistency of Kim Hyesoon’s absurd imagery and metaphors demonstrating the extremity of situation and state of being.
There are moments of hyperbole, abstraction, and ridiculousness emerging from the cracks, effects familiar to most of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry. This absurdity carries the book: following the edge of intense experiences are intense methods of processing and reflecting, and then there is the result, absurd. There is the making do, to get at the heart. Peeling back the layers is uncovering the outfits, masks, and personas. And yet, the poet’s connection to these metaphors is utterly sustained, these are as many facets of being and living as they are metaphor and structure. The poet’s proclamation that Phantom Pain Wings is a “record of the sequence” offers some insight into how she lives and breathes through her poetry. As absurd as it may seem as we witness it, Kim Hyesoon’s work is also utterly serious and rooted.
This book is not really a book
It’s an I-do-bird sequence
a record of the sequence
(from “Bird’s Poetry Book,” page 11)
The poems are enduring, overwhelming, and intensely human, despite the bird, despite Kim Hyesoon’s “I-do-bird sequence.” And yet at the end the book reaches its flourishing ending: accompanying the poems we find “Bird Rider: An Essay,” which offers a bigger glimpse into the poet’s writing than we have seen in any of the former books of English language translations. Kim Hyesoon’s exploratory take, which centers on a baby’s ghost (or “Bird Rider”) is a masterpiece, a direct reflection on her act of writing and her process, putting substance of truth to what the reader can only glean through reading the poems themselves.
Bird Rider is a baby ghost — rejected by its mother and starved, it becomes a ghost after ti dies. Bird Rider channels its voice through the sham, in the voice of a baby, but sometimes in the voice of a bird, chirping. Nobody understands the chirping.
(from “Bird Rider: An Essay,” page 167)
For most readers of this poet, “Bird Rider” will be the first multilayered exposure to Kim Hyesoon’s mind toward analysis and criticism, a side that has previously only been observable through her poetry. This essay, which could stand as its own work, its own contribution to the poet’s ever-expanding world is included as a helpful gift. It is worth bridging Kim Hyesoon’s work as a whole.
The poet goes beyond analyzing her writing in Phantom Pain Wings and offers, in this essay, so many tidbits of wisdom that are caught in linger through the reader’s gaze. “I don’t think I’ve ever comforted anyone with my writing. Moreover, I think literature betrays the readers’ desire to be consoled” (page 164). The openness of the poet does not reconcile the challenges in the book but amplifies them in a way that offers more sense-making and an additional lens for greater appreciation.
The I live, that I continually experience. As a living organism, I interact with things that surround me. I have an animal body that’s connected to the natural world, as well as to my body that imagines. The imaginary experience doesn’t leave the sensory experience alone. Deformation begins. I think of Time as the “doing” of the imaginary experience. When Time intervenes, my sensory experience emerges as an irreducible shape. I write.
(from “Bird Rider: An Essay,” page 165)
Similarly insightful, the “Translator’s Diary” offers the reader an above-average peak into the life of translation and the relationship between Don Mee Choi and the poetry of Kim Hyesoon. The diary is organized chronologically (January 10 to March 16). In it, the translator moves through the process of translation, of knowing the work, and, wonderfully, connecting it to previously translated works and the overall canon of the author. We are given insight into language, into correspondence, into biographical events of both the author and the translator. It’s a peak behind the curtains, a ride along the current, insight provided to see how we get from point to point.
That which is included in Phantom Pain Wings results in a remarkably robust text that can stand on its own and guide experienced readers and newcomers alike through the lively writing experiences of both Kim Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi. The book resonates despite its difficulty, and despite its enthralling scope, despite how it relates to Kim Hyesoon’s entire body (or bodies!) of work.
Right now, I’m ill up in the air
I’m deathly ill, unbearably thirsty
I want to open my eyes
but my nation says, Wait till I catch you!
All of its territory rejects my feet
(from “Don’t Fly in This Country,” page 110).
Greg Bem lived in Seattle for 13 years before moving to Spokane, where he has resided since 2023. He is a community college librarian and union organizer, small press publisher, poet and performer, and book reviewer, among other things. His reviews are linked on his website, and can be found published here in International Examiner as well as in Rain Taxi, North of Oxford, Exacting Clam, and Another Chicago Magazine.
