The book of the dead man
By: Marvin Bell.
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Port Townsend, Wash
Language: eng
Number of pages: 80
Description: Marvin Bell's ninth major collection of poems is groundbreaking, his most provocative and imaginative work to date. The phrase "the dead man" resounds throughout like a drumbeat registering the wisdom and genius of ignorance, fallibility, and mutability with a Zen-like detachment. Defying paraphrase, Bell's new poems demand to be understood in the context of the incantatory line as he illuminates the transcendent inscape in its moment of self-revelation.

The Book of the Dead Man demolishes boundaries between lyric poetry and serio-comic intensity, and announces a poetics of striking spiritual candor.