He served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1965 at the rank of First Lieutenant, and he was a licensed amateur radio operator.
Bell's first nationally distributed book, A Probable Volume of Dreams, was awarded the Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets in 1969.
Other honors for his work include Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowships, and Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia.
He served on the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University in Oregon.
[2] Bell's former students include Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, James Galvin, Albert Goldbarth, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, Jordan Smith (poet), David St. John, Michael Simms and James Tate.