For Marvin Bell
Friends, colleagues, and admirers celebrate Marvin Bell in his 84th year.
Born in Fowler, California — learned corridos and rhymes from his mother, Lucha, on the farm working roads and small towns. His father, Felipe, played harmonica telling tales of work in early 1900’s Wyoming. He graduated from UCLA, Stanford and the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. His awards include the Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship, the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, LA Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and recently, the International Latino Book Award. He is Emeritus Professor from Fresno State’s Chicano and Latin American Studies program and UC-Riverside’s Department of Creative Writing. In the last decade he has served as a Chancellor of the Board of the Academy of American Poets, California’s Poet Laureate, and the Poet Laureate of the United States. Recent book is Every Day We Get More Illegal.
Friends, colleagues, and admirers celebrate Marvin Bell in his 84th year.
A poem by Juan Felipe Herrera in memorium for the officers killed in Baton Rouge
A memorial poem by the Poet Laureate on the passing of Muhammed Ali
An obituary poem for Philip Levine by Juan Felipe Herrera.
And if the man with the choke-hold pulls the standing man down
It was you ....