Rampant

by Marvin Bell

Marvin Bell, one of America’s most influential, visible, and inventive poets, likes “ideas to have a little dirt on their shoes.” His wildly original and often gritty curiosity finds inspiration in wide-ranging locales, and even wider topics. He will take on any subject in his poetry, and the conclusion of Rampant is a ten-part suite, “Journal of the Posthumous Present,” which was commissioned by the Getty Research Insititute and published as a cover feature in American Poetry Review . The poem is remarkable for its original methods and socio-philosophic investigation, and points to the signature of Bell’s his ability to radically examine the world through poetry. From “The Bones Repeat Themselves from the Bottom Upward” Later there will be a wedding in the leaves
by the white church where the Boy Scouts box
in the basement, trying to be brave.
The owner of the fishing station watches the sea
through binoculars, fixing on the darker water
where the boats clustered to thin a school.
The days have been growing raw,
and he is willing to give the last ones five minutes
before he rips the tide apart with an inboard
and drags to the beach those who didn’t
see the end coming. “Marvin Bell enlarges our understanding of what poetry can do.”— Georgia Review “Bell’s passion [is] for exploring the traces of paradox in language, culture and nature.”— Virginia Quarterly Review Marvin Bell’s writing has been part of the conversation for 40 years. One of the country’s most visible poets, he is Iowa’s first and current Poet Laureate, a long-time teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has toured with the author-based band Rock Bottom Remainders. He also reads and lectures widely; collaborates with composers, musicians and dancers; and teaches in the Urban Teachers Workshop. He lives in Iowa City.

Genres: Poetry

110 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Marvin Bell was born in New York City on August 3, 1937, and grew up in Center Moriches, on the south shore of eastern Long Island. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Alfred University, a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.

Bell’s debut collection of poems, Things We Dreamt We Died For, was published in 1966 by the Stone Wall Press, following two years of service in the U.S. Army. His following two collections were A Probable Volume of Dreams (Atheneum, 1969), a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See (1977), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Since then, Bell has published numerous books of prose and poetry, most recently 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009), a collaboration with six other poets, including Tomaz Salamun, Dean Young, and Christopher Merrill, and Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) , which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

Bell’s other collections include Rampant (2004); Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000 (2000); Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Volume 2 (1997); A Marvin Bell Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose (Middlebury College Press, 1994); The Book of the Dead Man (Copper Canyon Press, 1994); Iris of Creation (1990); New and Selected Poems ( Atheneum, 1987);

He has also published Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews ( University of Michigan Press, 1983) , as well as Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry with William Stafford (Godine, 1983).

About his early work, the poet Anthony Hecht said, “Marvin Bell is wonderfully versatile, with a strange, dislocating inventiveness. Capable of an unflinching regard of the painful, the poignant and the tragic; but also given to hilarity, high-spirits and comic delight; and often enough wedding and blending these spiritual antipodes into a new world. It must be the sort of bifocal vision Socrates recommended to his drunken friends if they were to become true poets.”

Later in his career, Bell created the poetic form known as the “Dead Man poem," about which the critic Judith Kitchen has written: “Bell has redefined poetry as it is being practiced today.”

Beginning in 2000, he served two terms as Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. His other honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Poetry Review , fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia.

Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, retiring in 2005 as Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. For five years, he designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. Currently he serves on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. He has also taught at Goddard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Portland State University.

Bell has influenced generations of poets, many of which were his students, including Michael Burkard, Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, Albert Goldbarth. Robert Grenier, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Jarman, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, David St. John, and James Tate.

Marvin Bell also frequently performs with the bassist, Glen Moore, of the jazz group, Oregon. He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington.

source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ma...