A Minnesotan of Icelandic descent, Bill Holm was an essayist, memoirist, and poet. He was born on a farm just north of Minneota, Minnesota on August 25, 1943 and he died on February 25, 2009 of complications of pneumonia. He was a graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and later attended the University of Kansas.
with help from my friend, Janet Harrison.
JC
A Minnesotan of Icelandic descent, Bill Holm was an essayist, memoirist, and poet. He was born on a farm just north of Minneota, Minnesota on August 25, 1943 and he died on February 25, 2009 of complications of pneumonia. He was a graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and later attended the University of Kansas.
His four books of poetry are PLAYING THE BLACK PIANO , THE DEAD GET BY WITH EVERYTHING, BOXELDER VARIATIONS, and CHAIN LETTER OF THE SOUL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Milkweed Editions, 2009). He retired from Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature, in 2007. In 2008, he was named the McKnight Distinguished Artist of the Year, an award that recognizes artists who have made a lasting contribution to the culture of Minnesota. He once described himself as an "elf at heart in a giant body." His poetry could be poignant or humorous or political, and often touched on his Icelandic heritage or his well known love of music. He was a frequent guest on Prairie Home Companion.
Garrison Keillor on the passing of Bill Holm
"Bill Holm was a great man and unlike most great men he really looked like one. Six-foot-eight, big frame, and a big white beard and a shock of white hair, a booming voice, so he loomed over you like a prophet and a preacher, which is what he was. He was an only child, adored by his mother, and she protected him from bullies, and he grew up free to follow his own bent and become the sage of Minneota, a colleague of Whitman though born a hundred years too late, a champion of Mozart and Bach, playing his harpsichord on summer nights, telling stories about the Icelanders, and thundering about how the young have lost their way and abandoned learning and culture in favor of grease and noise. He thundered with the best of them though he had a gentle heart. He was an English prof who really loved literature, and he could buttonhole you and tell you he'd just finished reading Dickens again and how wonderful it was. He got himself into print pretty well, and anyone picking up his "Windows of Brimnes" or "The Music of Failure" or "The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere On Earth" will get the real Holm. He hated Minnesota winters and maybe that's what killed him, flying back from beautiful Patagonia to the windswept tundra and thinking about having to shovel out his house in Minneota. I'm glad he got to see Barack elected, which restored some of his faith in his countrymen. I wish I'd been there to catch him as he fell. I hope his Icelandic ancestors are waiting to welcome him to their rocky corner of heaven. I hope his piano goes to someone who will love it as much as he did. I hope that people all across Minnesota will pick up one of his books and see what the man had to say."
Paul Wellstone — October 25, 2002
On a gray sleety October day
The plane goes down in the north woods
With the large-hearted senator
Whose decency and respect for old ideals
Made half the citizens almost happy
To be Americans in a dark time.
Down went his wife and daughter too,
Three campaign workers, two pilots,
Eight in all, the radio says
Neglecting the ninth seat where Death
Dressed in an ordinary suit
Sat watching for his chance
To do a morning's harvesting.
Do you think he wasn't there
Hitching a ride, invisible, just as
He sat in the box at Ford's Theatre,
Held open the convertible door in Dallas?
He sits in the front seat of your car too,
Or waits feigning sleep with his head
Resting on the next pillow in your bed.
So we go on to write the same poem,
Sing the same sad song yet once more
Not for the dead who have gone
Over to the insensible kingdom
But for us who must now carry on
Without them. This time, as so often
Before, Death snatched a big one
Just when we could not stand to lose
His voice, that spoke, not just alone,
But for us millions who longed
For a world green, alive, about to bloom.
-Bill Holm
On a gray sleety October day
The plane goes down in the north woods
With the large-hearted senator
Whose decency and respect for old ideals
Made half the citizens almost happy
To be Americans in a dark time.
Down went his wife and daughter too,
Three campaign workers, two pilots,
Eight in all, the radio says
Neglecting the ninth seat where Death
Dressed in an ordinary suit
Sat watching for his chance
To do a morning's harvesting.
Do you think he wasn't there
Hitching a ride, invisible, just as
He sat in the box at Ford's Theatre,
Held open the convertible door in Dallas?
He sits in the front seat of your car too,
Or waits feigning sleep with his head
Resting on the next pillow in your bed.
So we go on to write the same poem,
Sing the same sad song yet once more
Not for the dead who have gone
Over to the insensible kingdom
But for us who must now carry on
Without them. This time, as so often
Before, Death snatched a big one
Just when we could not stand to lose
His voice, that spoke, not just alone,
But for us millions who longed
For a world green, alive, about to bloom.
-Bill Holm
copyright Milkweed Editions, 2009
published with permission.
