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.