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Voluntary Servitude: Poems
A chilling and masterful second poetry collection by Mark Wunderlich, the author of the award-winning The Anchorage Sometimes the heart breaks. Sometimes
it is not held hostage. The red world
where cells prepare for the unexpected
splays open at the window's ledge.
Be not human you inhuman thing. -from "Amaryllis" Voluntary Servitude asks of the beloved, "You say, Don't wreck me, and I say I won't, but how can I know that?" Here the poet is both servant and master to memory, sex, family, and the will of the lover, and the resulting poems describe the physical and psychological constraints and releases of relationships at the breaking point.
it is not held hostage. The red world
where cells prepare for the unexpected
splays open at the window's ledge.
Be not human you inhuman thing. -from "Amaryllis" Voluntary Servitude asks of the beloved, "You say, Don't wreck me, and I say I won't, but how can I know that?" Here the poet is both servant and master to memory, sex, family, and the will of the lover, and the resulting poems describe the physical and psychological constraints and releases of relationships at the breaking point.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
105 people want to read
About the author
Mark Wunderlich
12 books21 followersMark Wunderlich was born in Winona, Minnesota and grew up in rural Fountain City, Wisconsin. He attended Concordia College’s Institut für Deutsche Studien, and later the University of Wisconsin from which he received a BA in German Literature and English. Wunderlich earned a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University’s School of the Arts Writing Division where he studied with J.D. McClatchy, William Matthews and Lucie Brock-Broido, among others.
Wunderlich’s first book, The Anchorage, was published in 1999 by the University of Massachusetts Press, and received the Lambda Literary Award. His second book, Voluntary Servitude, was published by Graywolf Press in 2004. A third volume of poems titled The Earth Avails, is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2014. He has published individual poems in The Paris Review, Yale Review, Slate, Tin House, Poetry, Ploughshares, Boston Review and elsewhere. His work has been included in over thirty anthologies and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His work has been translated into Italian, Bulgarian and Swedish.
As a teacher, Wunderlich has taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Ohio University and San Francisco State University. He has taught undergraduate writing and literature courses at Stanford University, Barnard College and Stonehill College. Since 2003 he has been a member of the Literature Faculty at Bennington College in Vermont where he also serves as a member of the core faculty in the Graduate Writing Seminars. In 2012 he was named the Director of Poetry at Bennington—a series of on-campus readings, lectures and short residencies by prominent American and international poets.
Wunderlich is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University where he also served as a Jones Lecturer. He received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Amy Lowell Trust. He is also the recipient of Writers at Work Award, the Jack Kerouac Prize, and a fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the MacDowell Colony. In 2012 he received an Editor’s Prize from the Missouri Review and was also selected for a residency at the Arteles Creativity Center in Hämeenkyrö, Finland.
As an Arts Administrator, he has worked for the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Poets & Writers, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center where he was Acting Director. He currently chairs the Artistic Advisory Board at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Noemi Press.
Wunderlich lives in New York’s Hudson Valley near the village of Catskill.
Wunderlich’s first book, The Anchorage, was published in 1999 by the University of Massachusetts Press, and received the Lambda Literary Award. His second book, Voluntary Servitude, was published by Graywolf Press in 2004. A third volume of poems titled The Earth Avails, is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2014. He has published individual poems in The Paris Review, Yale Review, Slate, Tin House, Poetry, Ploughshares, Boston Review and elsewhere. His work has been included in over thirty anthologies and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His work has been translated into Italian, Bulgarian and Swedish.
As a teacher, Wunderlich has taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Ohio University and San Francisco State University. He has taught undergraduate writing and literature courses at Stanford University, Barnard College and Stonehill College. Since 2003 he has been a member of the Literature Faculty at Bennington College in Vermont where he also serves as a member of the core faculty in the Graduate Writing Seminars. In 2012 he was named the Director of Poetry at Bennington—a series of on-campus readings, lectures and short residencies by prominent American and international poets.
Wunderlich is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University where he also served as a Jones Lecturer. He received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Amy Lowell Trust. He is also the recipient of Writers at Work Award, the Jack Kerouac Prize, and a fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the MacDowell Colony. In 2012 he received an Editor’s Prize from the Missouri Review and was also selected for a residency at the Arteles Creativity Center in Hämeenkyrö, Finland.
As an Arts Administrator, he has worked for the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Poets & Writers, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center where he was Acting Director. He currently chairs the Artistic Advisory Board at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Noemi Press.
Wunderlich lives in New York’s Hudson Valley near the village of Catskill.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 22, 2022
Lovely.
Read
August 16, 2016I never did get round to writing up my feels about CRUSH but I have similar unwritten-up-feels about Wunderlich. They're not particularly similar poets but there's an intensity to them, a focus on queerness, and the erotics of power that works on the same bit of my brain.
[This non review brought to you by GR determination I will read 12 books this year, regardless of my feelings on the matter]
[This non review brought to you by GR determination I will read 12 books this year, regardless of my feelings on the matter]
February 10, 2009
When looking through ratings of poetry, I think everyone should keep one thing in mind: good poetry is ridiculously difficult. So, if I rate this book a three, it's really like a four compared to the fiction books. Weighted.
Wunderlich is a master of subtle imagery, combined incredibly detailed depictions. The problem is, his imagery is often too subtle, his depictions often too detailed. After finishing any one of these great poems, I thought the same thing: "I liked it. That was brilliant. But it was kind of minutious. And it could mean anything." Having said that, they poems are, intrinsically, good. I'm eagerly awaiting Mr. Wunderlich's next developing work.
Wunderlich is a master of subtle imagery, combined incredibly detailed depictions. The problem is, his imagery is often too subtle, his depictions often too detailed. After finishing any one of these great poems, I thought the same thing: "I liked it. That was brilliant. But it was kind of minutious. And it could mean anything." Having said that, they poems are, intrinsically, good. I'm eagerly awaiting Mr. Wunderlich's next developing work.
January 30, 2025
I understand that poetry is subjective so take this with a grain of salt but WOW this really worked for me. There were poems that struck me like a blow every line, and others that I couldn't quite grasp 100% that let you know you're looking at something intimate and personal. Such a wonderful collection, and I'm now very eager to pick up more from this poet!
September 18, 2021
Beautiful precision, brave and intrepid, heart wrenching and uplifting poetry. At times haunting and familiar- 'shame is repetitive' - unassuming and also so brazen.
August 7, 2025
"Sometimes a thing dies back but leaves its tone behind."
from "The Kept One"
“Shame is repetitive. Shame reinvents its shade and tenor.”
from "Obedience Attempts"
from "The Kept One"
“Shame is repetitive. Shame reinvents its shade and tenor.”
from "Obedience Attempts"
August 22, 2025
won over by this one. I love how these poems twist through images and scenes
August 16, 2007
I'm picky. I don't tend to like double-spaced poems. It gives a sense of separation. And maybe every line means to be a stanza in these double-spaced poems, but I don't think the poems work well this way. The lines need each other a little bit more than their distance allows.
Not every poem in here is double-spaced. That bit above was just my own little rant, which I think matters but doesn't apply to the entire book. I very much liked a few of the poems in here. "Ice Queen" and "Device for Burning Bees and Sugar," for example. Both move in the realm of loneliness, and loss, quite beautifully. The poems do lead you through strange tangles of relations out into a clearing. But sometimes that clearing is more a fortress, or a blankness, or a darkness like covering your eyes.
I'd like to spend more time with this collection. Perhaps I'll find I like it more. Mostly, though, I found myself looking for ways to stay interested. The language was often convoluted, full of vague notions, full of lots of "-tions." The best poems in this collections work imagistically, and I found myself wishing Wunderlich had trusted the impulse to move that way more often.
He does have a helluva great name, though.
Not every poem in here is double-spaced. That bit above was just my own little rant, which I think matters but doesn't apply to the entire book. I very much liked a few of the poems in here. "Ice Queen" and "Device for Burning Bees and Sugar," for example. Both move in the realm of loneliness, and loss, quite beautifully. The poems do lead you through strange tangles of relations out into a clearing. But sometimes that clearing is more a fortress, or a blankness, or a darkness like covering your eyes.
I'd like to spend more time with this collection. Perhaps I'll find I like it more. Mostly, though, I found myself looking for ways to stay interested. The language was often convoluted, full of vague notions, full of lots of "-tions." The best poems in this collections work imagistically, and I found myself wishing Wunderlich had trusted the impulse to move that way more often.
He does have a helluva great name, though.
January 29, 2009
I need to own this book. Audrey loaned it to me and I kept it for nearly 3 months, keeping it close to me when I wrote or had the desire to write. For that, I give Wunderlich high marks - he is a poet who inspires me to write better prose.
Voluntary Servitude, despite being "very poet-y" is still accessible to readers like me who cannot abide the high-brow, B.S. style of most modern poets who seem to pride themselves on being vague and confusing. I particularly enjoyed the use of animals - they appear in almost every poem: snakes, goats, horses (loved his "tack" poem), even bees. He has an incredible way of metaphorically describing trust, distrust, relationships, death, and sex. For a modern poet (this book came out in '04), he is very Gothic. And although he is not "Southern", I think he would write a brilliant modern Southern Gothic novel, if he ever embraced prose.
Voluntary Servitude, despite being "very poet-y" is still accessible to readers like me who cannot abide the high-brow, B.S. style of most modern poets who seem to pride themselves on being vague and confusing. I particularly enjoyed the use of animals - they appear in almost every poem: snakes, goats, horses (loved his "tack" poem), even bees. He has an incredible way of metaphorically describing trust, distrust, relationships, death, and sex. For a modern poet (this book came out in '04), he is very Gothic. And although he is not "Southern", I think he would write a brilliant modern Southern Gothic novel, if he ever embraced prose.
April 15, 2014
This was a book required for a class I took as part of a Creative Writing minor. Either we never actually used it, or we were give one poem from it that I never read. Regardless, I finally decided to give it a read.
Reviewing poetry is hard. How do you give voice not only to the visceral emotional reaction you get reading it, but the intention of the poet as well? I'll just say that this was a good collection and I enjoyed it. Perhaps I'll have more if I read through it a second time, something quantifiable.
There's a lot of snakes in here.
Reviewing poetry is hard. How do you give voice not only to the visceral emotional reaction you get reading it, but the intention of the poet as well? I'll just say that this was a good collection and I enjoyed it. Perhaps I'll have more if I read through it a second time, something quantifiable.
There's a lot of snakes in here.
December 15, 2008
I love Mark Wunderlich! I had the pleasure of hearing him read a few years ago, and I find myself greatly infulenced by his ghostly pastoral works. I treasre my signed copy which I have read over and over.
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August 25, 2010Prepare for the 2010 Poets Forum in New York City (October 28-30) by reading Wunderlich's newest book of poetry, and check out the Poets Forum 2010 bookshelf for the latest collections by each of the poets participating in the Poets Forum. Happy reading!
January 20, 2014
Lovely, precise...almost painfully so.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews