Description

In one sense, The Return of the Naked Man is an extension of There is a Naked Man (Main Street Rag, 2010), but in another sense, it is an entirely new and different book. At the surface level, of the 49 poems in The Return of the Naked Man, only one appeared in the previous collection. At a more significant level, over the eleven years between the two books, the Naked Man has evolved—which is not to say he has matured. At best, perhaps, he has developed and has entered more deeply into the joys, sorrows, and contradictions that he and all humans experience. It could be, though, that he has regressed.

The Return of the Naked Man begins at the end with the enigmatic circumstances of the Naked Man’s funeral, and ends at what might be a complete end of everything—or yet another beginning. (Just because a poet makes a book doesn’t mean the poet fully understands the book.) In between the beginning and the end (or the end and the end), we do manage to learn much about the Naked Man’s life and practices, and go with him on a journey through offices, meeting rooms, stadiums, convenience stores, churches, hospitals, monasteries, and landscapes of various sorts. Where the Naked Man finally ends up is a question that hangs in the air once the book runs out of pages.