Ecstatic, elegiac, and erotic, the poems in Quintessential Earthly Activities form a constellation of mortal loves and contradictions. In ancient philosophy and medieval alchemy, quintessence referred to the fifth and highest element, thought to imbue all of nature and to constitute the heavenly bodies. Chen Chen’s third collection of poetry considers the quintessences—the core elements—of contemporary life, not as fixed characteristics, but as ever-evolving aspects of a soul, albeit an insistently queer and creaturely one that doubts the existence of souls.