American poet Marvin Bell has died surrounded by family yesterday evening, the stereo playing Chet Baker’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” (3 August 1937 – 14 December 2020)
If you never heard the poem to his wife he always spoke in person and do not know the “Dead Man” poems, you must trust me when I express my sorrow at the passing of a great human being.
—Photo by Sam Roxas-Chua
“Marvin Bell taught 40 years for the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and served two terms as Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. He has published 24 books and is known for his many collaborations with other artists, including Whiteout, an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Nathan Lyons, and for his influential teaching. Often redefining his poetics from book to book, he is the creator of the ‘Dead Man’ and ‘Dead Man Resurrected’ poems, and has been called ‘ambitious without pretension.’ Bell edited poetry for five years for the North American Review at its rebirth and two years for The Iowa Review at its birth. He began and edited New Poets / Short Books for Lost Horse Press for five years, a series that published 15 poets, three to a volume. He also designed and taught a summer workshop for teachers from the urban program America SCORES for five years. He is a recipient of The Lamont Award for his first book, Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, Senior Fulbrights to Yugoslavia and Australia, and awards from The Academy of American Poets and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems will appear in October 2019. A short interview can be seen online in the ‘On the Fly‘ series.”—Pacific University MFA website
He was an essential part of of my MFA experience, adding immeasurably to my education, and a practical man all the while. He often sang, promoted the arts, and was generous with useful suggestions and kind support.
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
the long walk
the change of worlds
the parting glass
the train a-coming
thru that glass-darkly
now with those of which you sang
may sorrow be endured by the joy you left behind
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sources: Cherokee saying, Chief “Seattle”, Irish song title, Curtis Mayfield lyric, from Bible and the film by Bergman, with respect to Marvin Bell, and from Gary.
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CREATURES
by Marvin Bell
Am I to save the spider in the bathtub,
who lives in the drain
and can scramble up porcelain as if
its feet are suction, or shall I
be done with it,
as I have been done with ants and snails,
with armed yellowjackets
and the mice and the bats? You
tell me, who among us is not
taking steps that preclude the moral
disquisitions of a study group?
And the honeybees are gone this spring,
who lived next door for the last years
of their keeper’s health. He also
tended the graves of the war dead
at the Fort, and he kept, in an old car,
kindling piled to the roof. After
the operation, he could walk on a walker
but not chop wood. A Navy man,
he would have gone to sea
again, had they called,
leaving the civilian buzz of disquiet
without a thought.
—from Rattle 29, Summer 2008
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Marvin Bell: “It’s true that, no matter what, the literary world is full of insult. When you put yourself out to the public, you’re going to get some negative stuff. But writing just feels wonderful. I mean, I love the discovery aspect of writing. I love that. I love saying what I didn’t know I knew, not knowing where I’m headed, abandoning myself to the materials to figure out where I’m going. Of course your personality is going to come out of it, of course your obsessions are going to make themselves known, of course if you have a philosophic mind a matrix of philosophy will be behind things; everyone has a stance, an attitude, a vision, a viewpoint. All that will come out. But in the meantime, you’re just dog-paddling like mad. And that’s fun. That’s what I always liked about every art.”
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