About the Author

 

Robert Tremmel is the author of two books of poetry, Driving the Milford Blacktop and Crossing Crocker Township. His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, and New Delta Review (among others).

Bob also publishes academic scholarship in the field of English education. His articles have in appeared in journals like Harvard Educational Review, Research in the Teaching of English, English Education, and Composition Studies. He is the co-editor (with Bill Broz) of Teaching Writing Teachers of High School English and First-Year Composition, and author of Zen and the Practice of Teaching English.

Bob grew up in Sheldon, in Northwest Iowa, did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Iowa, and taught for seven years at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. He is currently Professor of English and Coordinator of English Education at Iowa State University, and since 1998 he has been living in Ankeny, Iowa with his wife Michelle, who also teaches at Iowa State.

Every spring he plants his garden and launches his boat, and every fall he digs horseradish root and gathers leaves for mulch.

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Comments

 

Robert Tremmel's There is a Naked Man will empty you not only of ego, but of all your preconceived ideas about poetry. Instead, this superb collection will fill you with surprise and delight, with the perceptions of a poet acutely aware of the moment--with all its resonances and vast metaphorical implications through time.

Mary Swander
Poet Laureate of Iowa,
author of The Girls on the Roof

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Samples

 

LIBRARY

 

There is a naked man
sliding between the stacks
in third floor heat, chaos
of Ls and LAs, moaning
of BFs and more BFs.

Every few steps
he veers to the right
or left and brushes
against a book
he has not read.

Small puffs of dust
rise in his wake
and dissipate
in the glare
of fluorescent light.

When he arrives at the Hs
he slows down and turns
to read, searching
spine after spine
for some sign the words
inside might reveal
even a scrap of knowledge
that could help him ease
his craving, regain
his balance, find his way

and all the while
an elevator

that could take him straight
to the basement, the Bs
and BDs, Ms through
MTs, mysterious Qs, cool
mechanical breeze

 

stands empty, with doors
open, humming faintly
an electrical tune.

 

VANITY TAG

 

There is a naked man
pulling a boat
through the morning
commute, when a blond
haired woman talking
on a cell phone and driving
a red Grand Am
with license tag
that reads THEWIFE
blows past him
at twice the legal speed.

"Whose vanity?"
the naked man wonders
as he and the boat
bump and squeak their way
over almost invisible crests
and troughs in the concrete
and gradually melt
into the grey, hazy
distance, the bass clef
curve where the barb
is set and the road ends
deep in the heron's
single blue note.

 

 

DRIVEWAY

 

There is a naked man
backing his pickup
past a sugar maple
that has been growing
in the same spot
for hundreds of years

past a juniper
that grew its first berries
the exact moment
Buddha sat down
under the Bodhi Tree

past a stone slab
that traveled across
three galaxies
and assembled itself right
where it landed, fueled
with starlight and cooling
in perfect tune

past a stairway
rising to a porch
decked with timbers
Jesus walked on once
and stilled the waters

and into the garage
where nothing much happens
to mice rummaging
through corners, crickets
mating and dying, comets
colliding, sending up
columns of dust and ice
on winds too subtle
to feel, too faint
to hear and invisible
to all but the naked eye.