Marvin Bell’s debut collection of poems, Things We Dreamt We Died For, was published in 1966 by Stone Wall Press, following Bell’s two years of service in the US Army. Subsequent collections included A Probable Volume of Dreams (Atheneum, 1969), which was 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. 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 and the American Poetry Review, fellowships from the Guggenheim and the National Endowment for the Arts, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and retired in 2005 as the Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters.