Ethnicity 1: Jewish

Nationality 1: American

Birthdate: 1937

Marvin Bell was born on August 3, 1937, in New York City, to a Jewish family that had emigrated from the Ukraine, and he grew up in a rural section of Long Island, New York. His childhood in a small town among farms would heavily influence his poetic vision. He attended Alfred University, in western New York, earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1958, the same year as his first, short-lived marriage. He then attended Syracuse University and then earned a master of arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1961. In Chicago, Bell took a class given by John Logan, a poet who inspired him to write poetry seriously and to join an informal group called the Poetry Seminar. He was so inspired by this group that he enrolled in the Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa, where he was...