Kim HyesoonCritiques

I'd seen Hyesoon's name in a twitter thread of writers in translation and she stuck in my head enough that hers was the first name I looked for in the poetry section at Prairie Lights. I was so pleased to find her!

Of course, I had no context or real knowledge of Hyesoon going in (nor much experience with translated poetry in general), and I spent a lot of this book worrying about how much I was missing by not knowing much Korean history or culture, and definitely nothing about Korean beliefs about spirits and reincarnation (a focus of much of this collection). Slowly I let go of that and tried to meet these poems where I was -- then I started to find my way into them.

Particularly my two favorites -- "By the River of Formalin" with its scientific imagery -- its brain inside a test tube separated from the rest of the body and yet dreaming the body, dreaming pain; and "Lord No" with is dizzying and effective use of repetition -- "Lord No who is not Lord No is never Lord No thus Lord No is Lord No of Lord No..."

Then, after the forty-nine poems of the death cycle comes a much longer poem rooted in a health crisis that left Hyesoon hospitalized for some time as doctors struggled to identify what was wrong with her and manage her pain. I think it would be very relatable to those who have struggled with chronic or difficult to diagnose illnesses.

These poems range all over from angry to sad to clinical, touch on the body's relation to mind and soul, a body's relation to other bodies, the ways life and death give each other meaning. I am sure that there are cultural aspects I missed in this work, but I greatly appreciated the translator's notes/interview with the author at the end. A great introduction! I hope to read more!

Masterpiece. A haunting sequence approaching the universal conundrum of death and life feeding each other from the particulars. As a monolingual, I can not compare this translation to the original. There were none of the usual compromising seams poetry translation can engender, only a terrible, unflinching beauty.