Adrienne Chung’s poetry collection Organs of Little Importance might be the most smart and playful book published all year.
LitHub wrote of the book:
“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.”
Organs of Little Importance is a book about loss, configured through the lens of evolution and Jungian psychology. I set out to assemble a playlist that would capture its particular attunement of unabashed girlishness, Tiqqunian and ungendered, vaulted by a high emotional pitch. Some of these songs are melancholic and plaintive, others frantic and yearning. All were in frequent rotation during the years I wrote this book.
Happy listening 💗
Vangelis: “Tears in Rain”
The speaker cries to the last words of a Nexus-6 replicant.
Roy Orbison: “Crying”
The speaker is still crying.
Björk: “Crying”
[A theme emerges]
Chyi Yu: “Graveyard Angel”
She cries from the grave! Opening lyrics:
“Please leave me now, I’m crying.”
Blonde Redhead: “Not Getting There”
She’s decided to stop crying and hit the gym. (I actually do listen to this song on the treadmill, where I like to visualize myself running away from all of life’s problems. This song in particular is good for outrunning the pain of love.)
Gary Numan, “Trois Gymnopedies (First Movement)”
Erika de Casier: “Puppy Love”
🐶💔
Kate Bush: “50 Words for Snow”
I’m partial to “stellatundra” and “blackbird braille.” Also “whippoccino.”
Laurie Anderson, “Walking and Falling”
John Cage: “In a Landscape”
Bach as played by Vikingur Olafsson: “Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974: II. Adagio”
The German movie Undine (2020) has many shots of the actress walking through Berlin to the somber keys of Bach’s piano concertos, to great effect. I love this movie.
Mabe Fratti, “Todo Lo Que Querías Saber”
Hype Williams: “Distance”
This one samples the Britney Spears classic “Everytime.”
Ennio Morricone, Edda Dell’Orso, “Veruschka”
POiSON GiRL FRiEND, “HARDLY EVER SMILE (without you)”
Françoise Hardy, “Traüme”
ML Buch, “Can You Hear My Heart Leave”
Spice Girls: “Wannabe”
We end at the source of one of the book’s two epigraphs (“If you want my future, forget my past”), the first being from On the Origin of Species. This means that the Spice Girls, specifically Sporty Spice aka Mel C, is now and forever in dialogue with Charles Darwin. Love that for them
Adrienne Chung’s poetry and prose have appeared in The Yale Review, Joyland, Recliner, and elsewhere, and have been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s MFA program.