Mars Being Red

Marvin Bell

Mars Being Red is the most political book of Marvin Bell’s storied career—and one of his most beautiful. Appalled by our government’s military aggression and destructive ideologies, he responded with a book willing to risk all, in an atypical book of personal poetry that delivers political goods.

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ISBN: 9781556592577

Format: Paperback

I Didn’t Sleep

I didn’t sleep in the light. I couldn’t sleep
in the dark. I didn’t sleep at night. I was awake
all day. I didn’t sleep in the leaves or between
the pages. I tried but couldn’t sleep
with my eyes open. I couldn’t sleep indoors
or out under the stars. I couldn’t sleep where
there were flowers. Insects kept me up. Shadows
shook me out of my doziness. I was trying hard.
It was horrible. I knew why I couldn’t sleep.
Knowing I couldn’t sleep made it harder to try.
I thought maybe I could sleep after the war
or catch a nap after the next election. It was
a terrible time in America. Many of us found
ourselves unable to sleep. The war went on.
The silence at home was deafening. So I
tried to talk myself to sleep by memorizing
the past, which had been full of sleepiness.
It didn’t work. All over the world people
were being put to sleep. In every time zone.
I am busy not sleeping, obsessively one might say.
I resolve to sleep again when I have the time.

About the Author

Marvin Bell, author of twenty-three books of poetry and essays, has been called “an insider who thinks like an outsider,” and his writing has been called “ambitious without pretension.” Reviewing The Book of the Dead Man for The Georgia Review, Judith Kitchen noted: “These new books by Marvin Bell are doing to poetry what has occasionally been done before—sending it into new and original territory. Bell has redefined poetry as it is being practiced today.” His latest books are After …

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Reviews

“Mars Being Red forces us to see that our government predilection for military aggression is just as common as our daily routines.” —Port Townsend Leader

“Bell is a furious poet who rages against war; his weapons of mass destruction are his words.” —Library Journal

“As grimly demotic as ever… Bell continues to display his familiar virtues: his poems project a consistent voice, direct, laconic, and unsusceptible to illusion.” —Publishers Weekly

“Bell knows that poetic witness is not mere journalism, knows that it must include the invisible, the often unnoticed, and the visible seen in new ways… [he] understands that it is the interiority of the writer and that of the reader that must meet in the poem.” —World Literature Today