Organs of Little Importance

Penguin Poets

De: Adrienne Chung, Solmaz Sharif - selected by

Narrado por: Adrienne Chung

“Mind detritus becomes the stuff of great art in the hands of poet Adrienne Chung . . . a poet in complete command of her craft.”—NPR.org

“Organs of Little Importance is a riotous feat . . . Ferocious. Funny. Deeply intelligent. Adrienne Chung leaves a charred wake.”—Solmaz Sharif, author of Customs and Look

From National Poetry Series winner Adrienne Chung, a debut poetry collection about psychology, love, and memory

Taking its title from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Adrienne Chung’s debut collection asks why we cling so dearly to the vestigial parts of our psychologies—residues of first impressions, thought spirals to nowhere, memories that persist despite outliving their usefulness. The speaker in these poems tries to wear more color, indulges in Y2K nostalgia and falls in and out of love; a Jungian psychoanalyst has a field day with her dreams.

While Darwin was perplexed and ultimately dismissive of these seemingly useless body parts, Organs of Little Importance reframes and repositions the apparent uselessness of our compulsions, superstitions, errant thoughts, and other selves. In diptychs and ghazals, sonnets and lullabies, Chung collects and preserves pieces of psychological debris as one would care for precious heirlooms, revealing their surprising potential to become sites of meaning and connection.

©2023 Adrienne Chung (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Mind detritus becomes the stuff of great art in the hands of poet Adrienne Chung . . . a poet in complete command of her craft . . . both highly personal and surprisingly universal. What a treat to spend an afternoon immersed in her world, to better understand her loneliness, to laugh as she indicts 'one swipe and you're out' dating culture and feel the pangs of nostalgia for lost time as it rushes forward.”—NPR.org

“With a sardonic wit and the kind of 'perfect-SAT' intelligence that can lead to solipsism or worse, Chung, an American based in Berlin, dares the reader to draw the same glib conclusion as the ex-lover who tells the speaker to 'stop thinking so much.' Yet behind the façade of hip cogitation is a reticent yearning for authentic connection, as the poet confronts 'the private, the public, the chthonic lore' of failed love and the meaning of life. In poems ranging from a therapy notebook annotated with dream footnotes to a crown of sonnets that aches for a primal, lover’s garden just outside the dungeon of selfhood, Chung assembles a bracingly funny and desolate debut.”—Lit Hub

“Organs of Little Importance alternates between frame-breaking experiments and revivified traditions . . . [a] taut tug-of-war between becoming and trauma, fantasy and reminiscence.”—Poetry