I admit that I really struggled through this collection. The ideas were incredibly abstract, and I think a reason for the particularly abstract nature of these poems is a result of things getting lost in translation from Korean to English. The translator, Don Mee Choi, did her best to attend to this in the back of the collection (called “Translator’s Diary”), which helped make things click a bit more. However, I think Phantom Pain Wings is an excellent example of a poetry collection that begs to be read in its original language to fully appreciate what the poet wants to convey. This is by no means the fault of Choi— Her explanations made it clear to me that these limitations will inevitably be present. I just didn’t expect it to be as much of a barrier as it ended up being for me.

As a result, I couldn’t quite follow the ideas of this collection, other than that birds and death are major motifs. It made it hard to appreciate what Kim wanted to get across, which I imagine is intelligent. I say this, having read Autobiography of Death, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I don’t know if it was the result of the translation limitations (again, I don’t fault Choi for this at all) or the general content (or perhaps both), but this collection didn’t quite meet my expectations, unfortunately.