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Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000
Marvin Bell is at the peak of his formidable powers. Long recognized as one of America’s liveliest poetic in-novators, he has said in a recent interview, "I want to do something beyond convention, beyond accepted levels of skill, beyond the expected, beyond the predictable, beyond the wholly welcome." Nightworks is truly beyond the usual fare, and critics have praised it as "a major event," "long overdue,"and "essential." As the definitive collection of Bell’s 40-year career, it combines new poems with choice selections from all of his previous books, including the now-infamous voice of the Dead I am the poet of skulls without why or wherefore.
I didn’t ask to be this or that, one way or another, just a young
man of words.
Words that grew in sandy soil, words that fit scrub trees and
beach grass.
Sentenced to work alone where there is often no one to talk to.
The poetry of skulls demands complicity of the reader, that the
reader put words in the skull’s mouth.
The reader must put water and beer in the mouth, and music in the
ears, and fan the air for aromas to enter the nostrils.
The reader must take these lost heads to heart…
—from "Skulls" "Marvin Bell’s career has been substantial [and] Nightworks reminds us just how distinctive his voice has been all along—how prophetic, how candid, how rigorously philosophical. He enlarges our understanding of what poetry can do."— The Georgia Review Marvin Bell has taught for nearly 40 years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the first and current Poet Laureate of Iowa.
I didn’t ask to be this or that, one way or another, just a young
man of words.
Words that grew in sandy soil, words that fit scrub trees and
beach grass.
Sentenced to work alone where there is often no one to talk to.
The poetry of skulls demands complicity of the reader, that the
reader put words in the skull’s mouth.
The reader must put water and beer in the mouth, and music in the
ears, and fan the air for aromas to enter the nostrils.
The reader must take these lost heads to heart…
—from "Skulls" "Marvin Bell’s career has been substantial [and] Nightworks reminds us just how distinctive his voice has been all along—how prophetic, how candid, how rigorously philosophical. He enlarges our understanding of what poetry can do."— The Georgia Review Marvin Bell has taught for nearly 40 years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the first and current Poet Laureate of Iowa.
- GenresPoetry
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2000
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94 people want to read
About the author
Marvin Bell
67 books59 followersMarvin 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 30, 2015
I may not have come across this poet were it not for the fact that he is scheduled to come visit the small island on which I live this summer. This collection of his work, 1962-2000, shows a fascinating range of topic and mood, image and emotion. From an early poem (1966): "It's there/ in the hole of the sea/ where the solid truth lies,/ written and bottled,/ and guarded by limp-/ winged angels-- ". And from 1981: "This year,/ I'm raising the emotional ante,/ putting my face/ in the leaves to be stepped on,/ seeing myself among them, that is;/ that is, likening/ leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,/ the passage of a leaf in autumn/ to the passage of autumn,/ branch-tip and winter spaces/ to possibilities, and possibility to God. Even on East 61st Street/ in the blowzy city of New York, someone has planted a gingko/ because it has leaves like hands,/ hand-leaves, and sex..."
October 19, 2011
When people ask me what use modern poetry is, I usually pull out the Dead Man poems from this volume. Bell is at once accessible on the first read, and deeply resonant on subsequent ones. If you are struggling through the poetry section, wondering how to find the "good stuff" -- this is the "good stuff."
May 3, 2009
If you like Tony Hoagland and Virginia Woolf you may like this book. I do.
December 11, 2012
I am now a Marvin Bell fan. I really enjoyed this book of poetry. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews