Marvin Bell, author of fourteen books, has been the recipient of the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets, Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. Bell is a longtime member of the faculty of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he is Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters. He has been called "a maverick" and "an insider who thinks like an outsider," and his poems, his teaching, and his column in The American Poetry Review, "Homage to the Runner," have influenced a generation of poets.

About Rampant:

"Marvin Bell enlarges our understanding of what poetry can do."
—Georgia Review

"Marvin Bell has the largest heart since Walt Whitman."
—Harvard Review

"Bell's poems, beyond their formal mastery, constitute an admirable project whose interrogations run deep."
—Poetry

"T. S. Eliot meets Allen Ginsberg...[Bell's poetry] will fascinate those interested in seeing what language can sometimes do in the hands of an expert."
—Booklist