Are all things possible?

In Robert Tremmel’s sly, playful poems, the naked man contains multitudes: alternately bodied and bodiless, muse and mused-upon, happy to disrupt life on earth and observe it from afar. When the man is, as in
Saturday Night; out in his garden / with an open bottle of Budweiser / and an old pie pan / from Bakers Square, his vision is cosmic, as he also ponders his drinking buddies / the slugs, already / stirring deep beneath / the lettuce leaves.

In Somewhere There is This Lake, the boundary between the earthly and the sacred is even more thrillingly tangled, to the point where there is no more boundary. The man realizes his boss’s mind is; completely riddled / with bullet points / and she is pointedly / ignorant of the riddle / and infinite points / that are the naked man / himself, sitting there / in a straight-backed / chair, silently / watching the drama / and the riddle / of the infinite points / that are the woman / sitting in front of him.

If the naked man has indeed returned (from exile? the future? the great beyond?), he also never left. Through his eyes, all things are not just possible but probable.

About the Author

Robert Tremmel grew up in Northwest Iowa, studied at the University of Iowa, and is Emeritus Professor of English at Iowa State University. His most recent book of poems is The Records of Kosho the Toad from Bottom Dog Press, and he has published widely in both academic and literary journals and magazines.

For the last twenty-three years, he and his wife, Michelle, have lived in Ankeny, Iowa, just a short drive from waters polluted by farm run-off from Northwest Iowa.