Iris of Creation

by Marvin Bell

Overview

A collection--Bell's eighth--that displays the poet at the height of his powers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556590320
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	07/01/1990
Pages:	140
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Marvin Bell, author of fifteen volumes of poetry and prose, is a distinguished poet and influential teacher who for the past 35 years has served as a faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 2000, the State of Iowa named him its first Poet Laureate.

Editorial Reviews

Although Bell's ( New and Selected Poems ) style has evolved significantly since the publication of his first collection more than 20 years ago, his perverse manipulation of language to suit his g private vision has remained frustratingly constant. While the poet's unusual metaphorical connections and odd word juxtapositions are undeniably original, his reliance on such idiosyncratic associations leaves the reader feeling dismayed and disoriented. What is one to make, for example, of such images as ``human tongues rusting in fire'' and ``bread breaking in cracks cut by steam''? The verbal context is of no help in comprehending these expressions, because Bell rarely gives us a hint as to our thematic location. Occasionally, we do discern a definitive subject--the fall of Communism in ``Big Day in Santa Fe'' and the Alaskan oil spill in ``The Big Slick''--and we are relieved to be grounded in a clearly delineated topic. Overall, these poems are disconcertingly emotionless. Only when Bell deals straightforwardly with the subject of time and its effect on our thoughts and our lives in poems like ``A Man May Change,'' ``Victim of Himself'' and ``Ice'' does the reader feel an affinity with the experience of the poet. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In his first volume since New and Selected Poems ( LJ 6/1/87), Bell offers a mature and self-assured collection of verse. While his scope and style have changed considerably over the years, his keen ear for language has remained true. Each poem here seems to deliver at least a line or two that linger and resonate, despite their surface simplicity. Listen, for instance, to the outsider in ``Frankenstein's Monster''--``given the parts, I assumed the role''; or Arab and Israeli ``deciding at the end of a gunsight/ what was a vision has become a stare''; or, in ``The Bow,'' an archer claiming ``A gift, it had a strange way of saying `Here,'/ it's only word, sometimes mistaking grass for the bulls-eye.'' Each states the commonplace and moves quickly beyond with humor, language, music, emotion. These poems offer a strong counter to the critics of ``the state'' of modern verse. Highly recommended for contemporary literature collections.-- Richard Churchill, Univ. of Baltimore

Library Journal