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Marvin Bell is the author of seventeen books of poetry, including Mars Being Red and Vertigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). His poems and essays have appeared in hundreds of anthologies, and among his many honors is the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Retired from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Bell was Iowa’s first Poet Laureate and now teaches for the brief-residency MFA program at Pacific University in Oregon. He is the creator of a poetic form known as the “dead man poem.”

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Best Advice

by Marvin Bell
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In our continuing series of responses from our authors on the best advice they were ever given, on matters that were key for them, we’re pleased to offer some thoughts, both practical and playful, from one of America’s best poets, Marvin Bell:

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