Organs of Little Importance

Chung’s debut collection, selected for the National Poetry Series, is a compendium of raw emotion, acerbic wit, varied poetic forms, and compelling shifts between personal psychology, philosophy, memory, and even, one might say, 21st-century sociology. The poems possess a boldness, in flaying open the self and world, that invigorates the collection, as well as a deftness in conjoining superficially disparate references, from the Spice Girls to virtual reality to Aristotle. Poems give an impression of recklessness in dealing with desire, family, dissatisfaction, and mediated existence, yet ultimately resonate with meaning (“There are things that cannot/ be undone though time inclines in bastard ways,/ ballet of Hollywood and science, knot/ of simulation, blackened mirror of/ a bardo out of which we can’t escape.”).