\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Marvin Bell has the largest heart since Walt Whitman.\u0026rdquo;\u003cI\u003e\u0026mdash;Harvard Review\u003c/I\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a recent interview Marvin Bell said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying for thirty years to figure out how best to put the news into poems\u0026mdash;what other people would call politics. But there are some hairy aesthetic questions connected to overtly political poems.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cI\u003eMars Being Red\u003c/I\u003e is the most political book of Bell\u0026rsquo;s storied career\u0026mdash;and one of his most beautiful. Infuriated by our country\u0026rsquo;s military aggression and destructive politics, Bell asks, \u003cI\u003eWhat shall we do, we who are at war but are asked / to pretend we are not?\u003c/I\u003e What Bell has done is craft a book of urgency and insight, anger and action:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cI\u003e. . . I am, like you, a witness\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003eto the coffins that were Viet Nam and Iraq,\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003eto a political machine that came up three lemons . . .\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003eI am the big ears and the wide eyes\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003eto whom time happened. I lived in stormy weather\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003ewriting songs of love because, tell me\u003c/I\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cI\u003eif you know, who can help it?\u003c/I\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cB\u003eMarvin Bell\u003c/B\u003e served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers\u0026rsquo; Workshop for over thirty years. He is the first and current poet laureate of Iowa.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e
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