{"id":14203,"date":"2021-01-19T10:49:40","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T15:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=14203"},"modified":"2021-01-19T15:32:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T20:32:53","slug":"episode-417-mark-wunderlich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-417-mark-wunderlich","title":{"rendered":"Episode 417 – Mark Wunderlich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 417:
\nMark Wunderlich<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_417_-_Mark_Wunderlich.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“Is poetry a place where you want to be restrained, or is a poem where you actually get to exercise some freedom?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>A series of deaths and personal losses in 2018 hang over Mark Wunderlich<\/a>‘s poems in his new collection, God of Nothingness<\/a> (Graywolf Press). We talk about that writing, how living through it unwittingly prepared him for the past year in Pandemia, and how the current situation compares with his arrival in NYC at the height of AIDS. We get into the uses of autobiography in poetry (his editor refers to his poems as “fiercely autobiographical”), Mark’s queerness being tied to his poetic-self, the inspiration of James Merrill<\/a> and his mentorship by JD McClatchy<\/a>, the notion of a poem as a created environment permitting freedom, why his poems go from longhand to typewriter to computer, his experience conducting a Rilke course by snail-mail<\/a> in 2020, his pandemic-adjustments as director of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program, and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read God of Nothingness<\/a> !<\/p>\n

“The thing that I love about poems is that they felt like worlds I could enter into. Reading a poem like Rilke’s First Elegy is like going into a house and knowing where everything is. They seem so alive still, but speak about things that are eternal.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n