​Mark Wunderlich Speaks for the Dead in God of Nothingness, BY JULIA MEDINA

            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.
 
God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich is essential reading for the lost, the found, the dead, and the living. In his fourth full-length collection, Wunderlich takes readers on a pilgrimage through his past, touring through his homes, his cities, and his lovers. He introduces readers to his ancestors, family-friends, and pets—most of whom are now ghosts—and all of whom haunt this collection. In the opening poem "Wunderlich," the poet informs us that "The name means 'odd.' / The name means 'queer.' [...] The name means 'curious,' as in 'he bought a haunted house.'" This collection serves as an attempt to make sense of life—from birth to death, from everything in between and everything beyond.
 
Wunderlich investigates the loss that is universal to the human experience but also offers insight into his own personal losses. Reflecting on the death of his nephew, he writes, “[Does it matter] that the noose he used to hang himself / was put out that week in the trash? / Does it matter that he lived, or that he died?” This open, “On the Autobiographical Impulse” opens with a section entitled AN ACCOUNT, in which the speaker appeals to the reader, or poetry, or the God of Nothingness himself, asking over and over again: "Does it matter?" Does any of this count? His litany of questions appears unrelated and yet intrinsically are linked, wondering "Why are we here? And to what end?" The speaker beseeches some entity to answer: “How much of what we are is what is seen?” Following all these questions, Wunderlich offers a metaphor through an image of moths, who

            search out the truth of the bedside lamp.
            Some will survive the night;
            others I will sweep from the bedside table
            where they spent their last hours yearning toward the light.

We, too, search for moments of hope and joy, and answers to these metaphysical questions that we cannot find answers to in time, always "yearning toward the light."

There is so much to love about this collection, but the imagery is particularly striking. In the section SKY BURIAL  Wunderlich writes, "[The vultures'] presence was disturbing, as was their smell, / but they gave to me the idea of a sky burial.” The use of monostiches in this poem, which provide ample white space, allow readers to contemplate every single word and phrase. The poem continues,

            So I practice for two days in the yard,
            holding the loaded gun to my chest or to my temple,
            fitting the open barrel into my mouth,
            clicking it past my teeth. The metal was cold
            and tasted of acrid oil, but I welcomed it,
            as though I were tasting the ardent tongue of a lover.

The subjects Wunderlich grapples with throughout this collection are compelling, his tone both whimsical and crushing. Readers struggle alongside him as he quests for answers to questions for which we have no answers—questions about memory, existence, death, and the self. SKY BURIAL ends:

            My presence here is a testament
            to the mind’s ability to correct itself.
            I am living, even if some days, it is more than I can bear.
            I am here, the sun crossing in shadows over the hills.
 
One of the most central poems within this collection for me is “First, Chill,” in which the speaker—Wunderlich—ponders the seasons in conjunction with the losses he has experienced, wondering what it means to live and to die: 
 
            but of autumn
 
            with its metallic skies swept with clouds,
            of the promise of something about to end,
 
            but not yet taken away.
            Above the Catskills, the peaks are veiled
 
            in a cloud of snow. This is where
            I think my dead have gone— 
 
            my father and Lucie and John—the dead 
            being impervious to cold,
 
            having left their bodies with us to cherish, 
            but also to bury and to burn.
 
This poem—as suggested in its title—is chilling. Wunderlich articulates the inexplicable feeling of wondering where the living go when they die—a question anyone who has lost someone is bound to wonder. The poet comes to a place of acceptance, regarding his lost loved ones: they are not reduced to nothing but rather in the mountains, and living on with him and through him.
 
The God of Nothingness is indispensable reading. Wunderlich’s thoughtful elegies, moving stories of resilience, and commitment to understanding life and death is too beautiful to pass up. Within these poems, all that is dead and gone lives on: “The fog burns off and is already forgotten / except by the lines on this page.”  ⋆

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Julia Medina is an undergraduate student at the University of San Francisco, where she will graduate in May 2021 and will then pursue her MFA in creative writing. Currently, she is working on her thesis, a work of fiction that explores an unreliable narrator's obsessive paradox between love and lust. 

Mark Wunderlich is the author of God of Nothingness; The Earth Avails, winner of the Rilke Prize; Voluntary Servitude; and The Anchorage, winner of the Lambda Literary Award. He teaches at Bennington College and lives in the Hudson Valley in New York.