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Organs of Little Importance
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.
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.
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Published October 10, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
September 22, 2024
u know what….some poetry collections are just not for u….this was one of those….too much rhyming & disney references
November 15, 2023
Adrienne Chung is a genius and this book is amazing ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
December 7, 2023
What a gorgeous debut. Funny, heartbreaking, and incredibly vulnerable. I can’t wait to read what Adrienne writes next.
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August 7, 2025this collection reminds me a bit of bluets in terms of the infusion of scientific data & research into the ephemeral nature of poetry. jung psychoanalysis, y2k references, and disney princesses can all be found in this collection.
some poems that resonated with me:
-Problem
-Blindness Pattern
-Ordinary Pain
i don’t usually gravitate towards this type of poetry but that’s what makes the sealey challenge, a challenge!
themes: girlhood/womanhood, interpersonal relationships, scientific inquiries, psychology
some poems that resonated with me:
-Problem
-Blindness Pattern
-Ordinary Pain
i don’t usually gravitate towards this type of poetry but that’s what makes the sealey challenge, a challenge!
themes: girlhood/womanhood, interpersonal relationships, scientific inquiries, psychology
January 7, 2024
4.5 stars
Finding a good poetry collection always feels SO GOOD. The start of this collection was rocky for me, but once I got comfortable with Adrienne Chung's language, and began to fall in love with her language, style, and the complexity of her poems.
Let's be honest, the age of poetry is quick lines, soft moments, and lined art drawings to accompany a message. That's what sells quickly in a Tumblr and Instagram poetry world. TikTok has been changing that to more long-form and slam-style poetry again, but this collection will not appeal to the general audience. That makes me sad. It's tragic that this won't get more love because Adrienne Chung's poetry deserves to have everyone singing, crying, and dissecting it for the greater meaning. "Y2K" was my personal favorite poem of the collection. Honestly, I want everyone to read this.
Please if you love poetry, consider picking Organs of Little Importance up. It's a fantastic little collection and I plan on purchasing a physical copy.
Finding a good poetry collection always feels SO GOOD. The start of this collection was rocky for me, but once I got comfortable with Adrienne Chung's language, and began to fall in love with her language, style, and the complexity of her poems.
Let's be honest, the age of poetry is quick lines, soft moments, and lined art drawings to accompany a message. That's what sells quickly in a Tumblr and Instagram poetry world. TikTok has been changing that to more long-form and slam-style poetry again, but this collection will not appeal to the general audience. That makes me sad. It's tragic that this won't get more love because Adrienne Chung's poetry deserves to have everyone singing, crying, and dissecting it for the greater meaning. "Y2K" was my personal favorite poem of the collection. Honestly, I want everyone to read this.
Please if you love poetry, consider picking Organs of Little Importance up. It's a fantastic little collection and I plan on purchasing a physical copy.
July 10, 2024
(4.5)
Was really sad to miss this author at Golden Sardine so made sure to pick up this collection ASAP and I was not disappointed! Felt this one really hit its stride, and highly recommend reading on the page so that you can experience the impact of reading Dungeon Master (XV) like I did. Only complaints are the modern references (a matter of personal distaste for poems mentioning TikTok, Instagram, swiping) and a few poems were misses for me personally, but overall a great read.
La Sagra
Duty Free
The Stenographer
Arrangements
Perfect
Blindness Pattern
21st Century Pizza
Fragment of a Vessel
Dungeon Master I, IV, V, VIII, IX, XIII, XIV, XV
Was really sad to miss this author at Golden Sardine so made sure to pick up this collection ASAP and I was not disappointed! Felt this one really hit its stride, and highly recommend reading on the page so that you can experience the impact of reading Dungeon Master (XV) like I did. Only complaints are the modern references (a matter of personal distaste for poems mentioning TikTok, Instagram, swiping) and a few poems were misses for me personally, but overall a great read.
La Sagra
Duty Free
The Stenographer
Arrangements
Perfect
Blindness Pattern
21st Century Pizza
Fragment of a Vessel
Dungeon Master I, IV, V, VIII, IX, XIII, XIV, XV
April 16, 2024
checking out a recommendation from Third Place Books for National Poetry month! I liked how it mixed modern media/ideas/experiences with classical literature, historical, and religious references & styles. I think I should re-read this again when I feel mentally prepared to annotate & analyze her language, but it is still super approachable.
Favorite poems: Bardo Baby, Y2K, Blindness Pattern, Dungeon Master
Favorite poems: Bardo Baby, Y2K, Blindness Pattern, Dungeon Master
March 29, 2025
Interesting book. I especially enjoyed the poems about the speaker’s mother. There’s also a wonderful ghazal, some sequential poems, and a lot of great sonnets.
December 21, 2023
thanks to netgalley for a free arc of this title! i really enjoyed chung's opulent, intellectual poetics and this collection makes you think as well as feel. her language blends the timeless with the incredibly timely, pop culture references and psychoanalytic thought abound. discussion of culture, sex, racial origin, and growing up make this a rich, diverse collection. some segments were a bit heady and dense, which i personally really enjoyed but it may be a bit isolating for casual readers. i look forward to seeing more of this poet's work!
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April 15, 2024This year I decided to try to get back into contemporary poetry, but I’ve been pretty remiss, to the extent that I got a bunch of books out of the NYPL and recently received an email that I was almost at the $100 limit for overdue fees where they cut you off on taking out new books (eek sorry library system). So I resolved to finally read some of these books…I think I was being too precious about finding the “perfect” time to read them and “really concentrate on them.” I think there’s validity in trying to concentrate on a poem and really pay attention to it but on the other hand I think part of this exercise is to see if any contemporary poetry grabs me, the alternative being that I get through a book, put it down, and realize I got very little out of it.
Anyway that didn’t happen with this book, I loved it as much as Tawanda Mulalu’s Please Make Me Pretty, I Don’t Want to Die, which I liked a lot. All of Chung’s poetry is great here and has some of the same elements of kitsch and slang pushing against allusions to Dante, Greek pottery, and traditional poetic forms like the interconnected sonnets in Dungeon Master which I fuckin loved. That and “Blindness Pattern”, the other longish poem in the collection, were my faves. I wanted to type out a sonnet from Dungeon Master but I’m sure this app will just close, so here’s a good (shorter) line that I liked: “What mortal strife / that God is dead yet thirsty still to dare / us to be free, to escape from this nightmare.” This after a bunch of discussion of True Detective and Nietzsche. Anyway, very funny, scary, enjoyable stuff that I would put at the top of my (admittedly small) pile of completed books for the year (again in the “poetry” folder on my profile if it interests you).
Anyway that didn’t happen with this book, I loved it as much as Tawanda Mulalu’s Please Make Me Pretty, I Don’t Want to Die, which I liked a lot. All of Chung’s poetry is great here and has some of the same elements of kitsch and slang pushing against allusions to Dante, Greek pottery, and traditional poetic forms like the interconnected sonnets in Dungeon Master which I fuckin loved. That and “Blindness Pattern”, the other longish poem in the collection, were my faves. I wanted to type out a sonnet from Dungeon Master but I’m sure this app will just close, so here’s a good (shorter) line that I liked: “What mortal strife / that God is dead yet thirsty still to dare / us to be free, to escape from this nightmare.” This after a bunch of discussion of True Detective and Nietzsche. Anyway, very funny, scary, enjoyable stuff that I would put at the top of my (admittedly small) pile of completed books for the year (again in the “poetry” folder on my profile if it interests you).
October 17, 2023
ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
A swirling mixture of nostalgia and psychology hyper-focused on Jungian studies. With a mixture of form breaking poetry to flowing and intricate prose, Chung weaves personal memories and social commentary throughout. The collection is cohesive and incredibly enjoyable to read!
My favorite poems are: "Bardo Baby", "OHNE TITEL", "Y2K", and "Dungeon Master."
A swirling mixture of nostalgia and psychology hyper-focused on Jungian studies. With a mixture of form breaking poetry to flowing and intricate prose, Chung weaves personal memories and social commentary throughout. The collection is cohesive and incredibly enjoyable to read!
My favorite poems are: "Bardo Baby", "OHNE TITEL", "Y2K", and "Dungeon Master."
December 3, 2023
Tasman
It was summer in Berlin. I wore a dress of white muslin.
I slept by the window, draped in Mennonite muslin.
In a hostel I met an Australian named Tasman.
Two weeks of heaven, smeared marmite on muslin.
When Tasman went home, I pleaded with heaven.
Night hung low in the branches, twilight muslin.
Why is there always that scene in the movies—
white sheets on clotheslines, rippling like muslin?
My mother prayed for a girl in pink satin.
God punished her with a small fright in muslin.
She loved me so much that she slapped me and singed me.
In the morning I bandaged my eyes in tight muslin.
I understood. No one's perfect—even Plath
could have called it a lampshade of bright muslin.
I chased the moon. I howled for my Tasman.
I stumbled through brambles in a dress of sliced muslin.
The next morning, I arrived at a clearing. The trees
had pale leaves, like they might be muslin.
Look where you are, Adrienne, it's just like the movies—
white flags around you, rippling like muslin. (1)
It was summer in Berlin. I wore a dress of white muslin.
I slept by the window, draped in Mennonite muslin.
In a hostel I met an Australian named Tasman.
Two weeks of heaven, smeared marmite on muslin.
When Tasman went home, I pleaded with heaven.
Night hung low in the branches, twilight muslin.
Why is there always that scene in the movies—
white sheets on clotheslines, rippling like muslin?
My mother prayed for a girl in pink satin.
God punished her with a small fright in muslin.
She loved me so much that she slapped me and singed me.
In the morning I bandaged my eyes in tight muslin.
I understood. No one's perfect—even Plath
could have called it a lampshade of bright muslin.
I chased the moon. I howled for my Tasman.
I stumbled through brambles in a dress of sliced muslin.
The next morning, I arrived at a clearing. The trees
had pale leaves, like they might be muslin.
Look where you are, Adrienne, it's just like the movies—
white flags around you, rippling like muslin. (1)
February 13, 2024
Adrienne Chang's poem expand and contract throughout this book of tight, impressionistic poems. From the long restless lines of Bardo Baby to the short lines of emotional pang of 21st Century Pizza, her poems, overall, display a sense of catching up to something emotional and elusive. Often, when the mood gets heavy in the collection, she unveils a wit that suddenly makes her poems glow and ache. It's a wonderful balance.
Toward the end of the book, in the excellent, Dante-esque 15-part sonnet, Dungeon Master she scours her past lives while looking forward to her next life, another bargain...
know there's nothing good behind that final door
but a wooden desk where I write in the dark.
Toward the end of the book, in the excellent, Dante-esque 15-part sonnet, Dungeon Master she scours her past lives while looking forward to her next life, another bargain...
know there's nothing good behind that final door
but a wooden desk where I write in the dark.
October 13, 2024
Ah I loved this collection! Perfect for the sad millennial girlies who are into Jungian psychology. My favorites were Ordinary Pain; The Day You Left, I Remembered; and Dungeon Master (an impressive crown of sonnets about the speaker’s past lives). Reminded me of the author’s interview in the Adroit Journal:
“I love working in form. It satisfies my Virgo moon and alleviates my decision paralysis. The stress of determining line length or the point of enjambment is gone. Many of my free verse poems started out in some received form or another. I actually have difficulty starting a poem without some sort of formal constraint. A bonus is that form prioritizes sound. I love when a poem has faint traces of meter in it, as if from a past life.”
“I love working in form. It satisfies my Virgo moon and alleviates my decision paralysis. The stress of determining line length or the point of enjambment is gone. Many of my free verse poems started out in some received form or another. I actually have difficulty starting a poem without some sort of formal constraint. A bonus is that form prioritizes sound. I love when a poem has faint traces of meter in it, as if from a past life.”
July 31, 2024
There’s a mathematical formula which plots the erosion of memory over time where retrievabllity is Oiler’s number, to the negative power of time over the stability of memory. They called this the forgetting curve. What this means is memory fades
What injustice wrought upon her,
betrayed by her own body
return to the rib of that primeval garden
recuse myself from this diversion
in the next life
I’ll make another bargain
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/120721...
https://www.mindtools.com/a9wjrjw/ebb...
https://www.cityofmadison.com/parks/f...
What injustice wrought upon her,
betrayed by her own body
return to the rib of that primeval garden
recuse myself from this diversion
in the next life
I’ll make another bargain
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/120721...
https://www.mindtools.com/a9wjrjw/ebb...
https://www.cityofmadison.com/parks/f...
January 18, 2025
A collection of poems about family, identity, and dreams.
from Duty Free: "Mornings I'd wake to bags of booty / at the door. I can see her drop them / in a hurry, evade one mirror, then another, / run to sate her shame with pills which put her out / before I saw her. I have no memories / of this mother. All I wanted was a mother."
from Fragment of a Vessel: "It was summer. We were young, / or at least I said I was, though I wasn't, / and hadn't been for years. I thought // I wanted someone young, a new love / to breathe into me another chance at living, / I wanted to feel. I wanted more time."
from Duty Free: "Mornings I'd wake to bags of booty / at the door. I can see her drop them / in a hurry, evade one mirror, then another, / run to sate her shame with pills which put her out / before I saw her. I have no memories / of this mother. All I wanted was a mother."
from Fragment of a Vessel: "It was summer. We were young, / or at least I said I was, though I wasn't, / and hadn't been for years. I thought // I wanted someone young, a new love / to breathe into me another chance at living, / I wanted to feel. I wanted more time."
August 22, 2025
I love love love this concept. The execution often didn't land for me, but I think that's more about me and the kind of poetry/language I enjoy and connect with; it's not on Chung, who I feel is very skilled and clever. Her use of form is incredibly impressive -- the corona of sonnets that ends the book? Dang. But there often wasn't emotional resonance for me, and again, I think that's because more avant garde poetry isn't my thing. If it's yours, you should check this out.
December 11, 2023
1. I am proud that I have read enough poetry to be able to juxtapose collections with one another. Organs of Little Importance felt similar from time to time to The World's Lightest Motorcycle by Yi Won. Which is to say that these poems had an outlandish, dreamlike quality though less grotesque than Won's.
July 17, 2024
“…After the amaranth, chive blossoms sprouted in their place,
little heads of periwinkle peeping from the window box.
I didn’t remember planting them, or I didn’t know they’d
bloom. We shouldn’t have. It was a mistake.
So I let them die, too.”
- from “Blindness Pattern”
I wish Adrienne could teach me to write sentences. This book is amazing.
little heads of periwinkle peeping from the window box.
I didn’t remember planting them, or I didn’t know they’d
bloom. We shouldn’t have. It was a mistake.
So I let them die, too.”
- from “Blindness Pattern”
I wish Adrienne could teach me to write sentences. This book is amazing.
April 8, 2025
(3.5/5) I can’t say these poems totally grabbed me or feel like they will stick with me in the way I always hope poems will, but Chung is definitely a gifted writer and her narration of this audiobook really brings you on a journey with her. There are a good amount of elder millennial pop culture references that may not land for everyone, but that I appreciated!
December 2, 2023
This was awesome! The writing- wow! So simple yet so witty, a rapid firing of words to form poetic sentences that penetrate the mind. As a fellow millennial I related with much of the references, which were very nostalgic. This was personalized to her yet is for each one of us. Brilliant.
December 7, 2023
Psychoanalysis of dream where dream becomes life and forget is a mathematical equation that we soon forget but remember in tentative forced entries
Now when we leave we enter into some strange badland that reminds us of a life we saw in a dream we devised a daydream made only for us and the dead
Now when we leave we enter into some strange badland that reminds us of a life we saw in a dream we devised a daydream made only for us and the dead
June 10, 2024
I guess feel comfortable enough to rate poetry books now.
Nice to read a current poet, but didn’t super relate to her material.
“Duty-Free” is by far my favorite poem in the book, highly recommend. Then “Fragment of a Vessel”.
Nice to read a current poet, but didn’t super relate to her material.
“Duty-Free” is by far my favorite poem in the book, highly recommend. Then “Fragment of a Vessel”.
November 10, 2023
Witty, deeply transformative. In shock tbh.
December 20, 2023
Very high 4 star, short but packs a punch.
April 25, 2024
god this is such a phenomenal collection of poems please give this a read
May 7, 2024
Beautiful, beautiful poetry!!!!
August 4, 2024
Sealey Challenge 2024 3/31
September 2, 2024
quite moving and beautiful - overall 4.5 stars rounded down and dungeon master was a perfect last poem to put an exclamation mark on the book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews