Bell, Marvin

Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000

ISBN: 1556591802
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2000. Second Softcover Edition. Softcover. Signed by Marvin Bell. "I am the poet of the 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." ("Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man's Footsteps (#2)", "2. Skulls," first lines, pg. 5) A collection of new & selected poems by Marvin (Hartley) Bell (1937-2020), the acclaimed & much-honored American poet who was the first to serve as the Poet Laureate of Iowa. Spanning much of Bell's career from 1966-2000, these epic poem-cycles & excerpts are allusive, evocative & intimately alive (though sometimes overshadowed by the ubiquity of death, as with the quote above). Trade-format softcover, "Second Edition" as stated at copyright page, "First Printing" as also stated & indicated by number sequence thereon (which ends in "2," presumably as this is a first softcover printing published simultaneously with a clothbound hardcover edition). On the title page, below his printed name, Bell has hand-written his signature in bold black ink. From the collection of Dan Rzicznek (b. 1979), an esteemed Ohio poet who is also an academician at Bowling Green State University. A definitive, rich & rewarding collectible compilation of Bell's deep oeuvre, in one of its penultimately rarest contemporary forms, greatly enhanced by the late poet's signature & with distinguished provenance. In relatively quite fine-to-very-fine condition with light rubbing, faint scratching to front, back covers & spine; a touch of wear & a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; slight rubbing, occasional light spotting & spot-staining to edges of text block. Interior fine-to-very-fine with only a bit of age-toning to margins/edges of blank inner covers; tiny bumps at corners of a few page leaves. Fine-Very Fine. [Item #7625]

Price: $25.00