A BONE-TOUGH THROAT

Books

God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich Graywolf, 96 pages, 2021 Paperback, $16.00

My father fell from the boat.
His balance had been poor for some time.
He had gone out in the boat with his dog
hunting ducks in a marsh near Trempealeau, Wisconsin.
No one else was near
save the wiry farmer scraping the gutters in the cow barn
who was deaf in one ear from years of machines—
and he was half a mile away.
My father fell from the boat
and the water pulled up around him, filled
his waders and this drew him down.
He descended into water the color of weak coffee.
The dog went into the water too,
thinking perhaps this was a game.
I must correct myself—dogs do not think as we do—
they react, and the dog reacted by swimming
around my father’s head. This is not a reassuring story

So opens the eponymous title poem from God of Nothingness. Having God and nothingness side by side gives one pause, on the cover of the book and in the title poem. The poem concerns a near-fatal drowning accident of the speaker’s father while he was hunting. A drowning father alone on the page and in the world. A father who has died by the time this book is a book. The drowning father is the image around which the rest of these unforgettable, well-crafted, original poems centripetally pull, regarding the nothingness of death, the nothingness of God, which amount to a spectacular something.

There is an urgency in here, as the elegies pile up, which not only concerns the father, but mentors and friends who are passing fast. Wunderlich is writing down what it is to grieve, what it is to lose. The measure of memorable poetry is that you go back to it.