"Marvin Bell's Dead Man poems should close out any anthology of the twentieth century and open any anthology of this new century's work. They change the game. They insist that we pay a new and different kind of attention." —The Georgia Review

“His poems are philosophical, concerned most often with the pairing of life and death, which he ponders with a reliable frankness and, over the years, an increasing sense of liberation.” —Booklist

“A book to make our aches more pointed, to give them a deeper sense of purpose… In our troubled times, one could do much worse than to be a companion to Marvin Bell’s Dead Man.”
—Kenyon Review

"[Dead Man poems] are by turns cosmic and earthy, dubious and faithful, determined and resigned. Deeply funny and comically humane, they remind us that life in this world embraces contraries." —Pleiades

"With the rhythms of a modern-day prophet, Bell creates a universe of one, recasting Whitman's 'Song of Myself' to mirror the present age."—Publishers Weekly