RIP Marvin Bell (1937-2020)

Iowa-based magazine Little Village shares word that Marvin Bell, who taught for many years at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and served as the state of Iowa's first poet laureate, has died at the age of 83. In an obituary posted today, Genevieve Trainor notes that Bell's "students included such luminaries as James Galvin, Joy Harjo and Juan Felipe Herrera." More: 

He was well-regarded, even beloved, as a teacher, inspiring an outpouring of verse this fall when former colleagues and students penned poems about him and participated in an online reading in celebration of Bell and his legacy.

His publication history spans 45 years and 21 books of poetry, as well as letters, essays and interviews, from 1966’s Things We Dreamt We Died For (Stone Wall Press) to 2011’s Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems (Copper Canyon Press). His work was frequently introspective, following an impulse to understand the self and, through that, others and relationships to others, especially family. But he also turned small objects as keys to unlock global truths — often, elements of nature.

Continue reading at Little Village.