Charles Wright recalls his time in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the book A Community of Writers:

Monday afternoons, workshop over, a group would walk from the Quonset hut to the Student Union. To the Ping-Pong room. Don, Mark, Marvin Bell, Bill Brady, Al Lee, Wm Brown, myself, and sometimes others. This was when I first got the notion that Don’s fierce intensity was not limited to things ethereal. Did we play vigorous Ping-Pong, or what? Mark was a good player; I was all right, a journeyman; Bill Brady was all right. But Don was very good. I couldn’t beat him. Mark may have a couple times; and Marvin, who was also a good player.

Poets Gerald Stern, Haki Madhubuti, James Galvin, and Marvin Bell reflect on the state of American poetry during the Contemporary American Poetry Seminar panel discussion at The University of Iowa on September 8, 1983.

Haki Madhubuti argues that poetry is ‘an endangered species’ in America.

He refers to three of his instructors—Marvin Bell, Gerald Stern, and Jorie Graham—as “a triad of magnificence that I hugely learned from,” and says the Workshop gave him time to “focus on the page” and develop a new aesthetic, or “tool kit,” to complement the one he’d developed through years as an activist poet.

“When I walked out of there, I had this new tool kit that I didn’t have before,” he says. “When you put both tool kits together, for me, that was the greatest joy—it’s like you have two secret formulas all of a sudden.

In this celebration of fifteen years of Live From Prairie Lights a line-up of prominent writers who have read from their work on “Live from Prairie Lights” including UI Writers’ Workshop alumna Mary Swander; Jane Hamilton; Dorothy Allison; Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Writers’ Workshop; Karen Joy Fowler; Colson Whitehead; Writers’ Workshop faculty members James Alan McPherson, James Galvin, Chris Offutt and Marvin Bell; Iowa Poet Laureate Robert Dana; David Hamilton, editor of the Iowa Review; Nonfiction Writing Program faculty member Patricia Foster; and Christopher Merrill, director of the UI International Writing Program will offer remarks or read selections to express their response to the “Live From Prairie Lights” 15th Anniversary. In addition, the audience was treated to clips from other authors who have visited the program throughout the years.

So, I asked John Logan, what shall I do now? And he said, well, there’s something at the University of Iowa called the Writers’ Workshop. I will send a letter to the poet, who teaches there, Donald Justice, and you can go and be interviewed, and maybe you can do that. So, I took a bus — I thought, Iowa City?…That’s the wilds!…I’m not, I’m not going to drive out there — I took a bus and stayed at a hotel that doesn’t exist anymore, it was downtown. I met Donald Justice in the Iowa Memorial Union the next day, and we talked for a little while, and then … we went bowling! There used to be bowling alleys in the basement of the Union. I was accepted into the Workshop.

Marvin Bell, an emeritus faculty member of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Iowa’s first Poet Laureate, reads his work. Bell says of his latest work

Some of these poems were written in the mornings at the First Avenue Java House and others at home very late at night. I recently founded the School of Prophetic Existentialism. It was an accident.

Marvin Bell, emeritus professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Iowa’s first Poet Laureate, reads from his latest collection, Mars Being Red. Marvin Bell has been a leader in the Poets Against the War movement and his new book is both his most personal and his most political.

Poets Marvin Bell, Rowena Torrevillas, James Galvin, Mark Levine, and Jorie Graham read the work of IWP participants whose work has been published in previous issues of the Iowa Review.

Works Read: Marvin Bell reads the following poems: “It Happened There Was a Man Who Wanted to Be a Hunter” by Ai Qing. “Give Indonesia Back to Me” by Taufiq Ismail. “The Exercise” by Fernando Arbelaez.

Rowena Torrevillas reads the poem “Indian Summer” by Nicolae Breban.

James Galvin reads an excerpt from the short story “Tort’s Bitter Marriage” by Amos Tutuola.

Mark Levine reads the following poems: “Barbaric Poem” by Guillermo Sánchez. “Wound and Knife” by György Somlyó. “The Biographer” by Ágnes Gergely. “Last Passengers” by Sunil Gangopadhyay.

Jorie Graham reads the following poems: “To Have a Friend” by Tomaž Salamun, trans. by Robert Hass. “Souvenir of the Ancient World” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, trans. by Mark Strand. “A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention;” “We Did It;” “Rain on a Battlefield;” “Out of Three or Four in a Room” by Yehuda Amichai. “Foreign Domestic;” “A Lovely Finish” by Elizabeth Bishop.

David Hamilton reads “Understanding Poetry” by Stuart Friebert.

In a reading from 1999, poets Marvin Bell, Rowena Torrevillas, James Galvin, Mark Levine, and Jorie Graham read the work of IWP participants whose work has been published in previous issues of the Iowa Review.

Works Read: Marvin Bell reads the following poems: “It Happened There Was a Man Who Wanted to Be a Hunter” by Ai Qing. “Give Indonesia Back to Me” by Taufiq Ismail. “The Exercise” by Fernando Arbelaez. Rowena Torrevillas reads the poem “Indian Summer” by Nicolae Breban. James Galvin reads an excerpt from the short story “Tort’s Bitter Marriage” by Amos Tutuola. Mark Levine reads the following poems: “Barbaric Poem” by Guillermo Sánchez. “Wound and Knife” by György Somlyó. “The Biographer” by Ágnes Gergely. “Last Passengers” by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Jorie Graham reads the following poems: “To Have a Friend” by Tomaž  alamunS, trans. by Robert Hass. “Souvenir of the Ancient World” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, trans. by Mark Strand. “A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention;” “We Did It;” “Rain on a Battlefield;” “Out of Three or Four in a Room” by Yehuda Amichai. “Foreign Domestic;” “A Lovely Finish” by Elizabeth Bishop. David Hamilton reads “Understanding Poetry” by Stuart Friebert.

In the video, you can also see poet Lauren Haldeman in the background, as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, working the soundboard for WSUI / Live from Prairie Lights.

Some of these poems were written in the mornings at the First Avenue Java House and others at home very late at night. I recently founded the School of Prophetic Existentialism. It was an accident. 

– Marvin Bell, explaining his writing process during a reading at Prairie Lights, Feb. 22, 2006

Marvin Bell taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for over 30 years, serving as the Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. Bell described the atmosphere of talented teachers:

A great many writers have come to Iowa City to read or teach. John Berryman taught here, Robert Lowell taught here, Karl Shapiro–he didn’t stay long. I think he may not have finished the semester. When I first came back from the Army, Don [Justice] had been away for a year and he had come back and couldn’t find a house, and he said he was going to leave. I was on a weekend pass from the Army to find a rental, so I found a house for him and one for us and then I went back to the Post.