First of all, this cover is absolutely hauntingly beautiful and dark. I love the image of what looks like ink in water. The dark images ends up looking a lot like bone structure and it just pulls your eyes to it.

I wish that the insides reflected this feeling more. The poems weren't bad, but there is some confusion in the overlap of translation and original language. Beautiful poems have the potential to express so much more than they do in this collection.

Not terrible, but not my favorite read.

Absolutely beautiful poetry that makes you FEEL all of the feelings that the author does. The imagery is exquisite. Some of the references I didn't understand but that could be an issue with translation or a lack of historical understanding on my part.

So far out, in the open,
cushioned in sleep.
In flight from the land
with love's heavy luggage.

A butterfly-zone of dreams
like an open parasol
held up against the truth.

Flight and Metamorphosis marks the culmination of Nelly Sachs’s development as a poet. Sachs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, speaks from her own condition as a refugee from Nazi Germany—her loneliness while living in a small Stockholm flat with her elderly mother; her exile, her alienation, her feelings of romantic bereavement; and her search for the divine. Forced onto a journey of endless change, Sachs created her own path forward.

Overall I enjoyed these poems quite a bit.
I don't know German but I did like seeing the two languages for each poem.

A very academic and dry start to the emotional and bleak poetry. Obviously if you have any background knowledge of the time period you know what the poetry is about. All of that being said the prose will tug on your heart.

Flight and Metamorphosis was poignant, disturbing, and full of unfathomable reflections from the perspective of an author who'd escaped Nazi Germany. Each poem felt like an intimate glimpse into paranoia, oppression, longing, homesickness, and the desperation to survive, to keep on experiencing the world. It was jarring to read--it never shies away from raw honesty--but also a whisper of beauty in surviving tragedy, in being more than what's happened to us.

This book was very interesting in having both original language and translated text in it but unfortunately the subject matter left me desiring more. This is definitely a poetry book you have to read into and has less obvious points which I felt made it much less palatable to the average reader. I think I just prefer my poetry a bit more obvious.

I always find it interesting when things get translated there seems to be a language barrier. Sometimes writing in the original language can not be translated with the same beauty and that’s what I got from this book.