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Seven Poets, Four Days, One Book
Lauded poet Christopher Merrill hatched a brilliant invite six other poets to join him in four days of writing in Iowa City. The poets would write for 30 minutes, creating a poem of 15 lines, and then read it aloud to the group. As poets heard the poems, they noted memorable words, images, and lines, which they would borrow to insert in subsequent poems of their own. These rounds continued, until, in a process of call and response and unprecedented collaboration, 80 poems had been composed. Those 80 poems are collected in this book, penned by authors who represent some of the best and brightest the world of poetry has to offer. Transcending differences of generation, gender, language, and vision, these poets have invented an entirely new facet of the poet’s creative process.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2009
2 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Marvin Bell
68 books59 followersMarvin Bell was born in New York City on August 3, 1937, and grew up in Center Moriches, on the south shore of eastern Long Island. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Alfred University, a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.
Bell’s debut collection of poems, Things We Dreamt We Died For, was published in 1966 by the Stone Wall Press, following two years of service in the U.S. Army. His following two collections were A Probable Volume of Dreams (Atheneum, 1969), a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See (1977), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Since then, Bell has published numerous books of prose and poetry, most recently 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009), a collaboration with six other poets, including Tomaz Salamun, Dean Young, and Christopher Merrill, and Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) , which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Bell’s other collections include Rampant (2004); Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000 (2000); Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Volume 2 (1997); A Marvin Bell Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose (Middlebury College Press, 1994); The Book of the Dead Man (Copper Canyon Press, 1994); Iris of Creation (1990); New and Selected Poems ( Atheneum, 1987);
He has also published Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews ( University of Michigan Press, 1983) , as well as Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry with William Stafford (Godine, 1983).
About his early work, the poet Anthony Hecht said, “Marvin Bell is wonderfully versatile, with a strange, dislocating inventiveness. Capable of an unflinching regard of the painful, the poignant and the tragic; but also given to hilarity, high-spirits and comic delight; and often enough wedding and blending these spiritual antipodes into a new world. It must be the sort of bifocal vision Socrates recommended to his drunken friends if they were to become true poets.”
Later in his career, Bell created the poetic form known as the “Dead Man poem," about which the critic Judith Kitchen has written: “Bell has redefined poetry as it is being practiced today.”
Beginning in 2000, he served two terms as Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. His other honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Poetry Review , fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia.
Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, retiring in 2005 as Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. For five years, he designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. Currently he serves on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. He has also taught at Goddard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Portland State University.
Bell has influenced generations of poets, many of which were his students, including Michael Burkard, Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, Albert Goldbarth. Robert Grenier, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Jarman, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, David St. John, and James Tate.
Marvin Bell also frequently performs with the bassist, Glen Moore, of the jazz group, Oregon. He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ma...
Bell’s debut collection of poems, Things We Dreamt We Died For, was published in 1966 by the Stone Wall Press, following two years of service in the U.S. Army. His following two collections were A Probable Volume of Dreams (Atheneum, 1969), a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See (1977), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Since then, Bell has published numerous books of prose and poetry, most recently 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009), a collaboration with six other poets, including Tomaz Salamun, Dean Young, and Christopher Merrill, and Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) , which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Bell’s other collections include Rampant (2004); Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000 (2000); Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Volume 2 (1997); A Marvin Bell Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose (Middlebury College Press, 1994); The Book of the Dead Man (Copper Canyon Press, 1994); Iris of Creation (1990); New and Selected Poems ( Atheneum, 1987);
He has also published Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews ( University of Michigan Press, 1983) , as well as Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry with William Stafford (Godine, 1983).
About his early work, the poet Anthony Hecht said, “Marvin Bell is wonderfully versatile, with a strange, dislocating inventiveness. Capable of an unflinching regard of the painful, the poignant and the tragic; but also given to hilarity, high-spirits and comic delight; and often enough wedding and blending these spiritual antipodes into a new world. It must be the sort of bifocal vision Socrates recommended to his drunken friends if they were to become true poets.”
Later in his career, Bell created the poetic form known as the “Dead Man poem," about which the critic Judith Kitchen has written: “Bell has redefined poetry as it is being practiced today.”
Beginning in 2000, he served two terms as Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. His other honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Poetry Review , fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia.
Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, retiring in 2005 as Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. For five years, he designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. Currently he serves on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. He has also taught at Goddard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Portland State University.
Bell has influenced generations of poets, many of which were his students, including Michael Burkard, Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, Albert Goldbarth. Robert Grenier, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Jarman, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, David St. John, and James Tate.
Marvin Bell also frequently performs with the bassist, Glen Moore, of the jazz group, Oregon. He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington.
source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ma...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 18, 2011
A wonderful collection which shows you what seven talented poets can do when locked in a room to write. It's wonderful how the phrases appear and reappear in various poems, how they change and build on each other. Though it's tempting to linger over many of these dense gems, it makes a big difference to read straight through the sequence at least once first, to get the big picture.
December 14, 2013
To be the cold fly in Iowa! To be a blank piece of paper between them!
July 23, 2017
I loved this book. It's a great experiment: take 7 poets from around the world and put them together for 4 days to see what they create. The results are a stream of semi-related poems that reflect the different voices beautifully.
July 1, 2024
God this book is so cool
August 25, 2024
A very interesting set a poetry from an excellent bookstore in Iowa City. Poets came together from all over the world for four days to create this book.
September 8, 2012
Though I don't like the self-congratulatory title or the contrived definition of the word "union" in various languages to show how multi-cultural the whole ordeal was, I'm still all for coaxing poetry in collaborative settings.
The introduction got me pumped: Andre Breton, cadavre exquis, Dean Young! If this book were nothing but the introduction, it would have been five stars, easily.
But the poems - I like my poetry metaphysical, and while there's some of that here, it's mostly of the Earthbound variety - the gritty, rag and bone stuff of the soul. I want my contagions airborn. I want the toxins to make you giddy with their free associations and surreal aspect. When you get too down into it, I find there's a risk of sticking your head too far up The Great Primeval Ass.
It felt like each poet was trying to out-obfuscate the last, but maybe that's just the nature of of a thing called, after all, exquisite corpse.
I realized my own response to four random words from a friend is no less terrestrial:
Dank Skull Horn Pick
deca canter is the age of dank
and ferocious tributaries
now and forever
kinder, we trot in three repeatable beats
sludge was the prototype of skull
küche, the result of cooking
up a system of downers
life begat life
laying down begat lying down
here we have the horn
of plenty of time
renounce, repent, repudiate
now and forever your calling
post-war we pick
incendiary possibilities from the rubble
can-do, amen, the end
kirche, a toast to the new and everlasting covenant
The introduction got me pumped: Andre Breton, cadavre exquis, Dean Young! If this book were nothing but the introduction, it would have been five stars, easily.
But the poems - I like my poetry metaphysical, and while there's some of that here, it's mostly of the Earthbound variety - the gritty, rag and bone stuff of the soul. I want my contagions airborn. I want the toxins to make you giddy with their free associations and surreal aspect. When you get too down into it, I find there's a risk of sticking your head too far up The Great Primeval Ass.
It felt like each poet was trying to out-obfuscate the last, but maybe that's just the nature of of a thing called, after all, exquisite corpse.
I realized my own response to four random words from a friend is no less terrestrial:
Dank Skull Horn Pick
deca canter is the age of dank
and ferocious tributaries
now and forever
kinder, we trot in three repeatable beats
sludge was the prototype of skull
küche, the result of cooking
up a system of downers
life begat life
laying down begat lying down
here we have the horn
of plenty of time
renounce, repent, repudiate
now and forever your calling
post-war we pick
incendiary possibilities from the rubble
can-do, amen, the end
kirche, a toast to the new and everlasting covenant
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews