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God of Nothingness: Poems
A magnificent book of hope and resolve written out of profound losses, by award-winning poet Mark Wunderlich
88 pages, Paperback
Published January 12, 2021
9 people are currently reading
206 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 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 17, 2023
Transcendent yet bound to that which makes us human: Mark Wunderlich takes you on that rocky path of existence that we will all trip over many times - yet it is this that makes us who we are in a world all too ready to label and then ignore who we strive to be.
April 12, 2021
I am trying to be better at keeping up with my book subscriptions so when it became National Poetry Month I collected poetry collections I had at home but hadn't read yet. This came through the Graywolf Galley Club earlier this year. Now I've had great poetry reads from this publisher before - Brute: Poems comes to mind in particular, but this collection wasn't for me. Almost every poem is about death or loss but not in an uplifting way. The most memorable poem is about a lamb that gets raised carefully like in 4H and at the end it's a bunch of animal carcasses and the child is like, whatever.
Maybe the poet should read less Nietzsche? But I should have known from the title.
Maybe the poet should read less Nietzsche? But I should have known from the title.
December 9, 2024
10/10 gay midwestern poet which I LOVE ofc and has such interesting things to say about self revelation in poetry and how much of poetry is autobiographical/if poetry *should* be autobiographical. up my alley 100%
February 20, 2021
I suppose the goal of any poet is to make the reader reread the work. As soon as I finished the final poem in “God of Nothingness,” I turned immediately to the front. The collection wraps up with stories of where Wunderlich ended up and who he has become; and it starts with the stuff that made him that way, his history and youth and family. It’s a book that’s almost meant to be read circularly, repeatedly, used as a map so the reader can find the connections of thought and history. There are so many “eureka!” moments, which always makes me feel like the writer is inviting me in and saying, “Come on, let’s play a game.”
April 7, 2021
"Sometimes I lied when I was bored. I wanted you / to know what I knew, though I eventually gave that up / preferring to make you laugh."
March 17, 2023
Some genuinely unforgettable pieces:- Haunted House, Wooden Box, Once Forgotten, First Chill, Death Of A Cat, Elegy For A Hanged Boy, Indifference Pf The Horses, and On The Autobiographical Impulse.
July 5, 2021
I enjoyed this book of poems. I'm not sure it's exactly a book of elegies, but a lot of the poems here deal with grief after death, or sometimes the encroaching senility of his father. He's also got periodic shout-outs to Lucie Brock-Broido, who was a mentor to him, or that's now I read it. Maybe they are just contemporaries? The title poem is maybe one of the strongest in the book, about a God who takes everything away from us, and it's a charged-up statement. Good stuff.
The poems are a little samey-- Wunderlich here uses long-lined couplets in most of the book, and given the subject matter of death and grieving, the poems do run together a little. I did sometimes want to be reading poems from a different project, to see his range or even breaking into different emotional territory. There are hints of that here, in his exploration of homosexuality or his German background, but those sidebars are wrapped into the larger project.
The poems are a little samey-- Wunderlich here uses long-lined couplets in most of the book, and given the subject matter of death and grieving, the poems do run together a little. I did sometimes want to be reading poems from a different project, to see his range or even breaking into different emotional territory. There are hints of that here, in his exploration of homosexuality or his German background, but those sidebars are wrapped into the larger project.
January 27, 2021
"It taught me a sharp lesson about the harder arrangements of affection, it being possible to love another being with one’s fullest self, and see how that love could be absorbed, lived with, accepted even—and not have that feeling returned."
Incredibly powerful and soothing collection of poems that tug at the heartstrings; take you to the drip-drained winters of Germany and leave you with a colossal melancholy for all things lost.
The poems being really intense and the language streaming through barriers of art and nostalgia, it is a truly enjoyable read up until the last space between words left unsaid. Immensely delighted to have found this book and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Incredibly powerful and soothing collection of poems that tug at the heartstrings; take you to the drip-drained winters of Germany and leave you with a colossal melancholy for all things lost.
The poems being really intense and the language streaming through barriers of art and nostalgia, it is a truly enjoyable read up until the last space between words left unsaid. Immensely delighted to have found this book and enjoyed it thoroughly.
February 10, 2021
"my presence whether a burden or a comfort / is impossible to say"
i decided to read this book because i loves the title. while i found the poems beautiful, i wasn't particular moved by any. i found them sometimes repetitive. others i found too safe-- i wanted bigger risks. one thing i loved about the collection is the way the home serves as a background and a character. my favorite poem is "on the autobiographical impulse".
Wunderlich's poems remind me of Larry Levis, Jay Hopler, and Richard Siken (all of who i would probably recommend over Wunderlich)
thanks to netgalley for the arc!
i decided to read this book because i loves the title. while i found the poems beautiful, i wasn't particular moved by any. i found them sometimes repetitive. others i found too safe-- i wanted bigger risks. one thing i loved about the collection is the way the home serves as a background and a character. my favorite poem is "on the autobiographical impulse".
Wunderlich's poems remind me of Larry Levis, Jay Hopler, and Richard Siken (all of who i would probably recommend over Wunderlich)
thanks to netgalley for the arc!
February 15, 2021
"I pray to the God of Nothingness/who rules those icy, bluestone peaks,/who hides the world of the living/underneath his coat of snow./He has taken them from me/and now I will them, coldly, to go."
Reading this in my library under a window looking out on my snowy little corner of the world stacked the deck in favor of my liking this sad collection of work from Mark Wunderlich. The poems are sorrowful, mostly kind, and courageous enough to be honest about death and dying, even the little deaths.
Reading this in my library under a window looking out on my snowy little corner of the world stacked the deck in favor of my liking this sad collection of work from Mark Wunderlich. The poems are sorrowful, mostly kind, and courageous enough to be honest about death and dying, even the little deaths.
January 27, 2021
I was incredibly moved by Wunderlich's most recent volume. The poems are characteristic of his style: quiet and reserved in feel, and filled with incredible images that are so vivid you can smell them, taste them, hear them... I think what I love best, in all the work and this volume too, is the way Wunderlich elevates the profane to the sacred. The intimate parts of life--common to so many of us--becoming sacramental. It is a reminder that each of us is precious.
May 18, 2021
Enjoyed Part IV, specifically the poem "On an Autobiographical Impulse". I've been thinking about writing poetry a lot more lately, and the way this poem is laid out is more aligned with how I've been thinking about organizing / structuring some pieces.
March 2, 2021
a slick and sharp transmutation of grief into something more concrete; it doesn’t hurt any less but you can stare at it directly once this poet is through with it.
February 18, 2021
I’ve developed a love for poetry . . . when it has rhyme, meter, structure, is familiar, is safe. I’m attempting to cultivate an appreciation for poetry that is none of those things. To that end, I’m reading poem collections that show up on “Best of 2021” lists. This is the first of them.
I had no knowledge of the poet or his background prior to reading this collection. What you have here is a short collection of poems dealing with nature, “ghosts” (literal and figurative), death, nostalgia, family, and identity. Other reviewers have labeled this collection as “comforting.” There was no comfort here for me. I actually felt quite unnerved reading some of the poems (particularly about the poet’s nephew’s suicide).
All that being said, here were a few standout moments for me:
“Haunted House” - A poem about restoring an old house that the locals claim is haunted. By the end of the poem, the speaker settles into his house as the ghost of “Old Dutch Mary” looks on.
“The Prodigal” - The speaker’s family life resembles that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The final lines stuck out to me:
“And so he returned, welcomed warily by our dwindling clan,
to shake his dying dad’s hand. Here I stand
in the background, frying the fatted calf in grease,
while he weeps for what was lost—for himself—
and with evident enviable release.”
“First, Chill” - I haven’t quite wrapped my head around the phrase “The God of Nothingness” which appears in the title and in two poems. However, these lines stuck out to me:
“I pray to the God of Nothingness
who rules those icy, bluestone peaks,
who hides the world of the living
underneath his coat of snow.
He has taken them from me
and now I will them, coldly, to go.”
I had no knowledge of the poet or his background prior to reading this collection. What you have here is a short collection of poems dealing with nature, “ghosts” (literal and figurative), death, nostalgia, family, and identity. Other reviewers have labeled this collection as “comforting.” There was no comfort here for me. I actually felt quite unnerved reading some of the poems (particularly about the poet’s nephew’s suicide).
All that being said, here were a few standout moments for me:
“Haunted House” - A poem about restoring an old house that the locals claim is haunted. By the end of the poem, the speaker settles into his house as the ghost of “Old Dutch Mary” looks on.
“The Prodigal” - The speaker’s family life resembles that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The final lines stuck out to me:
“And so he returned, welcomed warily by our dwindling clan,
to shake his dying dad’s hand. Here I stand
in the background, frying the fatted calf in grease,
while he weeps for what was lost—for himself—
and with evident enviable release.”
“First, Chill” - I haven’t quite wrapped my head around the phrase “The God of Nothingness” which appears in the title and in two poems. However, these lines stuck out to me:
“I pray to the God of Nothingness
who rules those icy, bluestone peaks,
who hides the world of the living
underneath his coat of snow.
He has taken them from me
and now I will them, coldly, to go.”
July 2, 2022
These poems have a crystalline quality, a quiet sparkle. The topics include deaths of family, friends, and animals, suicide, familial history and personal travel. A thread runs through them of resigned and quiet perseverance with occasional surprise and delight, though this voice appears not to trust that happiness is entirely possible or even necessary. There's clear-eyed acceptance of frailty and mortality, great details, and curious, unique stories in this volume, which is brutal in many places. However, the tone throughout is calm and matter-of-fact, and the poetry is so lyrical and visual that when I got to the end, I immediately wanted to read the book a second time. Great work: absolutely melancholy, perfect reading for a gray day in front of the fire.
October 23, 2023
This collection was so hard to read, in a good way. The raw truth and emotion in Wunderlich's poems, it's musical and haunting. I would read a poem, ruminate, move on, like I do with most poetry collections, but I could only do a few at a time. I had to take a break to give myself a moment to clear my headspace.
I initially thought, if you are going through some hard times, some depressive thoughts, I might not recommend this collection. I still might, but everyone processes things in their own way, and I could see how this could be cathartic. Reader beware, on that note, but I'd say I loved it.
I initially thought, if you are going through some hard times, some depressive thoughts, I might not recommend this collection. I still might, but everyone processes things in their own way, and I could see how this could be cathartic. Reader beware, on that note, but I'd say I loved it.
January 14, 2021
ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
God of Nothingness was a quick and fairly enjoyable read. The collection boasts flowery and lush peices on family bonds, nature, the experience of being yourself, and personal identity.
I have no criticisms to give nor did anthing really stand out to me.
Overall I enjoyed the world in which Wunderlich painted while I was in it, and felt content after coming out of it.
God of Nothingness was a quick and fairly enjoyable read. The collection boasts flowery and lush peices on family bonds, nature, the experience of being yourself, and personal identity.
I have no criticisms to give nor did anthing really stand out to me.
Overall I enjoyed the world in which Wunderlich painted while I was in it, and felt content after coming out of it.
June 25, 2022
This was a really interesting collection of poems reflecting on relationships and the queer experience. Wunderlich examines himself in relation to the world around him and uses some intriguing imagery throughout. Overall, I enjoyed this one.
January 15, 2021
As poetry this book did not really suite me.
As stories, I was intrigued.
The writer has a way of giving small glimpses into life with his poems.
As stories, I was intrigued.
The writer has a way of giving small glimpses into life with his poems.
January 15, 2021
“Once forgotten I could walk away and be free.” (16)
November 4, 2021
Austere vibe.
May 18, 2022
3.5/.75
I'm used to millennial queer poetry, so this is a distinct tone shift, but a welcome one.
I'm used to millennial queer poetry, so this is a distinct tone shift, but a welcome one.
April 12, 2023
Very dark and haunting.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews