d Artist Distinguishe 2008

BILL HOLM 2008 DISTINGUISHED ARTIST THE McKNIGHT FOUNDATION

Call me island. Or call me Holm. Same thing. It’s one way to start, though like so many other human starts—or human books—it’s not original. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors no matter how many machines we invent. Only our memory and our metaphors carry us forward, not our money, not our gadgets, not our opinions. —from Eccentric Islands, 2000 MINNEOTA, MINNESOTA 1 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist The M 2008 Distinguished Artist c Knight Founda tion | Minneapolis, Minnesota 2 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist I Minneota,” he has said. “ Minnesota. of characters he says, hecanclearly his see life and his country. decadeago.Froma bought cottage thathe singular vantage point, fishing old an of windows” “magical the through sea the toward looking hours spends he piano, beloved his playing and writing, China, Madagascar, andI would Virginia—and then and Kansas to him take next would beginning, justjourney, poet’straveling his 0 mls at to east, miles 100 a “elsewhere.”to the town Istill make my homewhen and I amnotelsewhere.” farm father’s my of south town first “the is Minnesota,

exotic, butto something see inside of us.” celand, the birthplace of his grandparents. Where These days, These I Erika L. Binger,Erika L. Chair, The McKnight Foundation Introduction lthough forever tied to Minnesota, n , Bill Brimnes, of Windows The H l ge, e ae aog h lnsae ad the and landscapes the along takes he goes, olm H H is first real venture from home took him about him took home from venture real first is olm spends summers on the northeast coast of coast northeast the on summers spends olm G ustavus “We travel not to see something celand. A opu Clee n t Ptr But Peter. St. in College Adolphus l f y ok ae ely about really are books my of ll H olm writes that Minneota, that writes olm H olm is indeed no stranger vnuly ed i to him lead eventually I n addition to teaching, firmly planted, and still growing,“blacksoil” ofMinnesota. in the H cornstalk.” a like soil black its of out grow and place, a in belong carries apiece of the world backto uswhen heinevitably returns. us—and just as he travels towith Minnesota in belongshis mind’sreally eye, he he also that assured rest we teacher, and are musician, we Though end. essayist, poet, exceptionalthis theworld the with share to privileged in home him points always compass fortunateare Minnesotansthat Billus. from away time his of jealous be needn’t we so, or years a 45 past during his 30years asawriter, performer, andteacher. resonated deeply with readers, listeners, and thousands of students has which telling, straightforwardnesstheir theof in lies artistry slowly.die friend dear a watching of despair the to corruption, political by engendered rage the to eating, and cooking of bliss the lot—from a seen has ow lucky for us that McKnightthat us for lucky ow “For better or worse,” he writes in writes he worse,” or better “For essays, and poetry of books dozen a nearly in told As lthough H olm has made a habit of being “elsewhere” in the in “elsewhere” being of habit a made has olm iven the complexity of his stories, his of complexitythe Given D istinguished , “you Failure, of Music The H olm is a wandererwhose a is olm rtist Bill Artist H H olm is olm H olm’s olm 3 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG PG 52 47 46 h 40 39 36 33 31 30 28 27 26 24 23 22 12 08

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Selected Bibliography/D The Ghost of Wang Wei Looksat Skagafjörd Music for anold pumporgan Paying A The SeaEats What I H AWell Tempered I Messenger of Failure byVidar Hreinsson Advice Playing H Artist’s Statement byBill Holm Bill H CONTENTS ndependent People byEinarMárGudmundsson The Windows of Brimnes xcerpt from TheWindowsof bout the A ot Sleeping at Bill H o(l)mage: N olm Grown byJohnCalvin Rezmerski olm byRobert Bly ttention byLawrence Owen is OwnSong byDavid Pichaske ward otes from friendsandcolleagues sland byEmilieBuchwald t Pleases olm’s H iscography ouse byBartonouse Sutter 8 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist facingherethewhat is of corner northeast the almost at Vopnafjördur,outside Partly by sheer chance. human solution to technology. so me, bore They machines. the interestthroughcompleteLudditeof lacka fromcontempt, in but history—even itself. pianos, language newspapers, books, libraries, on assault office work, a little creaky in the back, a little gloomy at the human notes?letters,essays,musical old piano (London, circa 1850), missing a creaky a on project) summer (Well-Temperedmy fugues II, Clavier coffee. now-chilly little a drinking words, few hours. Too wet to turn the hay. Meanwhile air. morning the perfuming windrows, damp other inthe hayfield, with their long, displeased beaks. scribbling. keep and well, sheep. escaped for looking door the to foryoume—or today. Why scribble Why T What am What Artist’s Statement his morning, July 12, and why am whyhere —and doing I m o a lgi tc-a a al nt precisely not all, at tech-man plug-in a not I’m so far from Minneota, my real home? realmy Minneota, from far here —so this O I have a quiet day to do it, but partly, nlyF,C, Arctic I am sitting at a table in a farmhouse just pair of noisy whimbrels trill at each at trill whimbrels noisy of pair A cean. Long fields of fields local in hayLongof Ocean. lie am 65 now, officially retired fromnow, officially retired 65 am I D . avoid them. avoid I G unnar,theneighbor, comehas ’m no help, so so help, no I’m still scribbling—poems, still I G#. ’ve played a few Bach few a played I’ve N o I I am writing—these t has drizzled for a for drizzled has t G# minor fugue for I t seems the right the seems t wish him wish I I I think, celand, fjord, close to this house; three of my four grandparentsfourmyborn were of three house; this to close fjord, by unconscious design. Two of my great-grandfathers farmed in this lovers, friends. we begin to keep the register of our personal dead: parents, mentors, Quixote, print for those who now can never know them alive. lastyears, my literarymentors, have givenlittlebeen a morelife in the in now early,and disappeared who friends unlucky young, too dead bothparents, mythat so books my of part registerthat make with only us left alive to join someone else’s register. known, truly everhave we say,everyone includespast, 100—itlive Gilgamesh, kept have scribblings those ourselves, we than eternal more little themarepaperThoughbooks on books. bound certainly—in only a put must we dead, our of hold keep to wish we if skeptic;afterlife our best, they touch andbindustogether, like it ornot. are. sometimes we though idiotic and quarrelsome tribe, a into us connect that threads fine but to make connection to all of human history on the planet, to the write not just to amuse and divert (though here, and the fourth only a few hours away by horse—no cars then. scribble for the pleasure and benefit of the dead. the of benefit and pleasure the for scribble I H amlet, and Faust (to list only a few) alive in us. in alivefew) a only list Faust(to and amlet, Antigone, As we age, the size of this register swells until —if we Achilles, have a history, you have a history. a have you history, a have I eneas, Jesus, Buddha, Jesus, Aeneas, I hope that happens, too), I have tried to Njáll, A m an am I t birth, t Don A t I

For it is life we want. We want the world, the whole beautiful world, alive— and we alive in it. That is the actual god we long for and seek, yet we have already found it, if we open our senses, our whole bodies, thus our souls. — BH 9 10 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist “B Walt asks:“What isit then “Itoo between lived,” us?” heanswers, . Just asyou feel when you look onthe river and sky, Ifelt. so or ever many so generations hence; with you, you menandwomen of ageneration, .It avails not,neither timenorplace—distance avails not;Iam others them willsee .(the islands—the world). .Ahundred years hence, orever many so hundred years hence, more to me, andmore inmy meditations, than you might suppose. 1856 (it goesbackward, too): o, ihu fly nesadn wa i sy. e g it that into poem. age We says. it what understanding fully without boy, Whitman. Walt whole bodies,thus oursouls. our senses, our open we if it, found already have we yet seek, and alive — world, And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are My mentor among poets— among mentor My beautiful whole the world, the want We want. we life is it For of amplehills wasmine.”rooklyn of I t is a love song for us— and we alive in it. That is the actual god we long for long we god actual the is That it. in alive we and first read “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” as a young a as Ferry” Brooklyn “Crossing read first I all of us who entered the planet after as among as Americans— is, of course, of is, epn te hi lte o te ol oig ln it whatever into future willcome. along moving soul the of letter chain of the work keeping happy the up takes you among someone until continue, why all is for Walt That now, [us].” you and see at [Bill cannot looking but you as distance, good Bill the as are] all multitude for a humans. knows, among Who . dear . . born. readers, Vopnafjördur, dear farawayWalt in yours, morning this are of honored of splendor call roll the my childhood, dead, my of Minneota the now So — cnie’ ln ad eiul o yu eoe o were you before you of seriously and long “consider’d ae rte, n itn to intend and written, have I H olm— and

The “Walt Whitman Wall” in the English department at Southwest Minnesota State University That is why I have written, and intend to continue, until someone among you takes up the happy work of keeping the chain letter of the soul moving along into whatever future will come. — BH 11 12 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist over half acentury, but notmuch. truer Americanhas existed and than Bill H . no reservations), those of because properly, . (more country native . ’60s high traditionally typically Minnesotan, characteristically I H esist much,obeylittle.”—Walt“Resist Whitman ay uas u nt nuh eagles.” enough not but humans many toogods, much news too. enough wisdom,. not . and in than those imposed by mainstream, middlebrow other terms on himself define to and corruptioncenter theof from f i hm in home his of Brimnes (2007), Professorof William unsuited to my nature” for comfort. Fifty years later, in an saw blossoms,” and [flax] gazed out from his farmhouse bedroom across “a ofsea bright blue Bill County, Medicine YellowTownship, America overripe with t reflects a cantankerous independence that we recognize as we recognize that independence a cantankerous reflects t l’ fvrt ahrss o a ln as long as for aphorisms favorite olm’s ceti Islands Eccentric W H by David Pichaske Playing HisOwnSong olm’s career has been a lifelong struggle to find a place far place a find to struggle lifelong a been has career olm’s l Wimns die to advice Whitman’s alt American. For all his oft-voiced reservations about his H ofsós, 20) bu hw a a o i See Prairie Swede in boy a as how, about (2000) “too much religion and not enough I ead ars te blue the across celand, merica “too strange, too hostile, too hostile, toostrange, “too America eias a be oe f Bill of one been has Americans H olm gazed out of the window olm. H l, r (Ltl Billy”) (“Little Jr. olm, ae nw him. known have I America. A hns change Things lni, t an at tlantic, The Windows H e wrote

work asBill’s own favorite authors, Whitman andThoreau. the at school graduate Minnesota; Peter, St. in undergraduatestudies explorations: geographical came Later imagination. own his and authors, American (canonical “L”capital a with Literature music, classical into were escape remain permanently blindered, deaf. Township, Minnesota, or Bronx, Prairie Swede is parish the whether matter much not does it and ofsome youtheknowparish,” Sarah in terms Self psychological own his defining geography, newly explored some by place home the measuring back, coming and out beginning,” eieet n 07 awy a eun o ecig t Southwest at teaching to State returnMinnesota a always 2007, in retirement to Fulbright a down Route 68 from his home in Minneota. in home his from 68 Route down U I n his life and writing, Bill writing, and life his n niversity of Kansas; a teaching position at O wrote T.S.wrote I ead a er n China. in year a celand; hr “o hv t ko te ol s wl before well so world the know to have “You ther. U niversity in Marshall, Minnesota, not 15 miles 15 not Minnesota, Marshall, in niversity D Lwec, h Bible, the Lawrence, .H liot, who offers as good a key to key a good as offerswho Eliot, O rne Jewettrne toldyoung a Willa Cather, H N olm has spent a lot of time going time of lot a spent has olm ew York: eyes and ears that never d rm 90 ni his until 1980 from And H “I olm’s early excursions n my end is my is end my n H ampton I eadc sagas), celandic I nstitute; H olm’s “Billy” Holm’s first self-published book, Hats Around the World, circa 1950 Bill Holm, 1970

At the age of 10, Holm was busy assembling “The Collected set himself squarely against the established power structures and Poems of Wm. J. Holm, 1953,” printing the poems on unlined paper received wisdom of his hometown—and America—during the 1950s, and sewing them together with thread, but for all his youthful embodying the ’60s version of Whitman’s admonition: “Whatever aspirations, he would not publish his first book until the age of 41. the power structure wants you to do is probably not in your best Holm is a Robert Frost, not a John Keats: his work is the product of interest, so do the opposite.” In an early essay titled “The Grand long incubation. During his adolescence, while others were playing Tour,” Holm wrote, “One of power’s unconscious functions is to rob football, drinking Grain Belt, and picking rock in their fathers’ you of your own experience by saying: we know better, whatever fields, Holm was singing in the Icelandic Lutheran Church choir, you may have seen or heard, whatever cockeyed story you come up playing the piano, and refining his philosophy of life. “I have my with; we are principle, and if experience contradicts us, why then own philosophy of life,” read the words below his senior photo you must be guilty of something.” Shaped from experience or story in the 1961 Minneota High School yearbook. “I made it; I live or imagination, your world is truer than their world, and don’t you it; and I change it when I please.” In most things, Holm forget it.

— BH 13 14 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist scattered throughout). For the next 12 years ont” a atoe b oe Bill literary one by authored college was hornet,” the editing was he magazine, 1965 By fall. that College Bill graduation, son’s his of spring the stroke debilitating a suffered N the in rear view mirror of time, an automobile driving last east, to the for receding, limits city Minneota “what “I essay the in recalled “ out. get to students motivate they depressive: and ew York,ew Boston,Washington.” H Perhaps it is well thatwell is Perhapsit olm, Jr., did not look back: he enrolled at enrolled he back: look not did Jr., olm, atd ot o e i te ol ws the was world the in see to most wanted I is ed om “eod h dr jw o the of jaws dark the “Beyond poem, lead (its Prospects celanders, Boxelders, Soybeans and Poets,”and SoybeansBoxelders, celanders, merican high schools are so repressive so are schools high American H l, ih other with olm,

E H ven when Billvenwhen olm avoided Minneota, G ustavus A H 18,” t l poems olm H Adolphus olm, Sr.,olm, H olm got educated, married, divorced, and worldly,” where, he says, “Minneota— work— an on Variations I Failure: of Music “The essay the in succinctly to the parish. “The paradox,” “The wrote,parish. thetohe thatfarther “wasthe away and in 1977 he purchased a $5,000 experience house — in Minneota and returned high-school rootlessness, books the used as blunt instruments, sneering disbelief— as disillusioning in essay an E in self shadow a of idea (H necessary.” is it practical; not is This lives. conscious our poisons and vicious turns it money,or no us makes it opposite,thoughthis with friends make we “Either Minneota— in piano his beside framed hangs broadside, “ titled poem the to preface prose his encountering and Minnesota of out getting both to Bly were major influences, making contact with the world amounted make contact with the world.” For and out go to is Poetry 20s your Yourin job40s. neurotic. 30s, your later,in comes too you’re 20s; your in poetry great write can’t that’sYoudisaster.and a 20s, their in poets of creativityout great the in when morelargely (Wesilent.learnmay is career,he early and marriage dea,”expandedwhilehe and slightly yearssubsequent these in on etal toe nones ih h wrd rvd lot as almost proved world the with encounters those ventually Robert Bly once told an audience at Knox College, “We expect “We College, Knox at audience an told once Bly Robert H merican educational system.)kjnkxxxxxxxxxxxnkjnkjkjn educational American atclry n “I in particularly olm completes his current project, a history of his 60 years 60 his of history currentcompletesa project,his olm the “the fifties lasted a long time.” “I traveled, ry er” in Years” Early ead 99 in 1979” celand h Wnos f Brimnes— of Windows The olm would return to the Jungian the to return would olm H Advice”— olm, on whom Robert and Carol h Wnos f Brimnes .) of Windows The which, as a letterpress a as which, and Islands Eccentric empty-hearted O ther. he wrote, he he wrote n his on I n a n I traveled, to places utterly unlike Swede Prairie and my father’s in fact, the late 1970s and the early ‘80s were for Americans of farm, the more clearly I saw and understood the farm, the more the Holm’s generation a time of retreat from urban chaos, a time of wisdom it had to offer revealed itself to me.”kajdslkjaslkjaslkdjal discovering Woodstock and other country retreats (the 1980 census holm took work where he could find it—including a week of is the only census in American history to show more people moving “Poetry Out Loud” readings with Frederick Manfred and Phebe to “rural” areas than to “urban” areas) and a good time for writers of Hanson—and ink where he could make it: in little magazines the small town, countryside, and wilderness. Robert Bly was in all (Minnesota Monthly, Crazy Horse, Spoon River Quarterly), in a the poetry textbook anthologies, radios across America tuned each chapbook titled Happy Birthday Minneota! (1981; edited by Tom weekend to Garrison Keillor for the news from Lake Wobegon, and Guttormsson, Bill Holm, and John Rezmerski), and in another tiny even the New Yorker was filled with writers like Annie Dillard and chapbook titled Minnesota Lutheran Handbook (1982). The Happy Wendell Berry writing about pastoral locales far from the Big Apple. Birthday anthology contains work by Robert and Carol Bly, Alec Beginning a teaching career at Southwest Minnesota State Bond, Florence and Philip Dacey, Leo Dangel, Phebe Hanson, Tom University, Holm got the best of both the ’80s and the ’60s: the baby Hennen, William Kloefkorn, Frederick and Freya Manfred, Howard of the state university system, Southwest runs about 15 years behind and Jody Mohr, Joe and Nancy Paddock, and John Rezmerski. This is the current national trend, and was thus in 1980 a remote outpost an impressive list and a clear indication that Holm was discovering of the high ’60s. An entry in my own journal for January 13, 1982, the literature of his own place. In this respect, his experience reads, “Lunch with crowd replicated that of Robert Bly and of Paul Gruchow, who grew up on of students, faculty: Kari a farm not 30 miles north of Swede Prairie Township: “I had not on my right casually imagined, or been encouraged to imagine, that it smoking a joint in the was possible to live in the country and write books, middle of the cafeteria, too. Nor did I suspect that it was possible to Holm on my left calling for write books about our countryside. . . . I was left to the undermining of the unearth by my own devices, years [after high school middle class and return of and college] the whole fine literature of my place,” Marx and Lenin to the wrote Gruchow in Grass Roots, his 1995 book of essays. In an article classroom.” This was also on Frederick Manfred, Holm also admitted, “I had not imagined as the time of the so-called a teenager that a writer could live in such a place [as Minneota].” Cornstock readings at the

— BH 15 16 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist Bjornson’s 1954 Senate campaign against Hubert Humphrey gets theautograph MinneotaBilly Holm, age11, nativeValdimar of Bjornsonduring was an elegantly designed and illustrated and designed elegantly an was Variations Bug Boxelder printing sold out before the publisher could circulate review copies. H the at typeset was book an on VariationsFailure: of Music “The and Grandeur” Poetry characterprofiles,Minneota gatheringof a Failureis of Music The — (1996) and (1990) Everything books— these Both operations. publishing literary nation’spremier the of ditions, publisher of publisher Editions, would remain small and virtually invisible, but the other— spine. the i Bill recalled he as city,” in bigthem the of privacy guarded not the ways to in available forgive and tolerate, know, could one whom towns, out spun hwae lcl n rrl writers. rural and local showcased Philip to birthgave Cornstock audience. an develop and stuff,their strut beer, drink salad, and dish hot another’s one on dine to gathered musicians and poets where slam, poetry early of kind a Marshall), in Legion American l’ fin Tom friend olm’s H n 1985 two different small presses published “real” books by books “real” published presses smalldifferent two 1985 n olm: books bearing the author’s name and the book’stheon titleauthor’sand the name bearing books olm: O n te ae cletos f poems of collections later the and D are firmly rooted in rooted firmly are ut Loud adventures, and prose meditations like “H (1985). (1985). Failure of Music The cys ekog asal etvl, hc further which Festivals, Marshall weeklong acey’s O s aot te ih ait o caatr i small in characters of variety rich “the about East ne— Plains Press, publisher of publisher Press, Plains G et Mneoa bten inoa and Minneota (between Minnesota Ghent, tomsn otiue photos. contributed uttormsson h Hat a B Fle Ayhr o Earth on Anywhere Filled Be Can Heart The Boxelder Bug Variations— Bug Boxelder newspaper office, and office, newspaper Mascot Minneota H l’ pae n etr Minnesota. western in place olm’s H l plse tls e had he tales polished olm d e ul a audience. an built he And The Music of Failure— of Music The h Da Gt y with By Get Dead The would become one become would I I Milkweed dea.” The dea.” s initial ts orizontal

gathering of witty poems, prose pieces, and even musical Thom Tammaro’s Imagining compositions celebrating the insect that is the bane of rural Home “Is Minneota in Minnesota in the fall. The book’s genesis, according to its author, America Yet?”) The penny was an assignment for one of the creative-writing classes Holm auctions of the Farm taught: “You don’t have to go to exotic places to find material. You Holiday Association, DFL can write a poem about anything. That boxelder bug there—for next politicians like Floyd Olson class, write a poem about it.” Never one to ask more of his students and Hubert Humphrey, than he gave himself, Holm wrote a poem about the bug . . . and then Republicans like Valdimar another, and then another, and then another. In 1988 Boxelder Bug Bjornson, and the prairie Variations became a musical production at the Lyric Theatre in populism of Holm’s father Minneapolis, with Holm himself playing piano and harpsichord. provided a tradition with These books, the work of a writer of considerable experience, which he could identify: power, and vision, celebrate not some Other of distant place or “Come into an old café / in Ghent, or Fertile, or Halloway / . . . These abstract idea, but features of the social and geographical landscape are the men wrecking the ship of state— / the carriers of darkness.” Holm so disdained as a high-school senior. “The further away In “The Music of Failure: Variations on an Idea,” Holm proudly from Minneota that I got, the more I realized that my described his own “prairie eye” and concluded, “Nothing can material as a writer—not just the material, but the be done about living here. Nor should it be. The heart way that I saw the world, and the lens through which can be filled up anywhere on earth.”xxxxxxxxxxxxx I observed America, the world, and my life—had In his book Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, Greil something to do with this funny little town where I Marcus talks about an “old, weird America” embodied in the folk- was born,” Holm told MPR’s Euan Kerr on May 12, 2008. Holm music tradition recovered by Dylan, into which Dylan himself does not romanticize the past, but he sees in the rapidly disappearing became increasingly absorbed. Reading Holm’s portraits of Ronald “pickled-in-amber culture” of the Icelandic Americans of his the Road Runner, Rose Bardal preaching sermons in Icelandic to parents’ generation an attractive alternative to the glitz and glam the cornstalks, Minneota bag lady Sara Kline, and his own father, and consumerism of what the writer Jean Shepherd called “the who “god-damned this, and god-damned that, and god-damned a creeping meatball.” (Holm titled his contribution to Mark Vinz and politician as ‘an asshole too dumb to piss with his pants full,’” one

— BH 17 18 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist a batfl n mjsi i tee ulig has been buildings replaced by these a species of in soulless utilitarianism.” majestic and beautiful was what that in too sad are they but age, own our of us writes, photographs, introduction.urban Melman’s of book 2003 of way by wrote read to he wants about,” one no subjects on essays of and at look to wants windmills, rocks, tractors, “H and silos. graveyards, cars junked outhouses, barns, Ghosts, of for Landscape essays 1993 his For join. to moves too, he, which . . . America realizes that “H r ae itrs f l pae ta remind that places old of pictures are ere H olm, too, celebrates an old, weathered, curmudgeonly ere is a book full of pictures of stuff nobody stuff of pictures of full book a is ere H l slce sbet od n weathered— and old subjects selected olm I The Quiet Hours, Quiet The a esy o Mike for essay an n H olm

eerm “H telegram: H to alternative blessed the China was nor expected, there administrators card-carrying what not certainly H i present, paper.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx legal yellow of pad a on longhand computer, andeven typewriter, preferring to write his manuscripts Jeffers, Frost, rpnn o idvda eprec oe pry doctrine. party over experience individual of proponent Bill got Xi’anH quo, pro quid But education. about less knew and little spoke who apparatchik party a was China from got Minnesota what because part in years, two only lasted exchange Jiaotong Xi’an with exchange teacher a in Minneota forever. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Manfred. Frederick and McCarthy, Eugene Bly, Carol and Robert Stafford, William McGrath, of Thomas Sueur, anthology 2007 writers, his State in Minnesota defined Southwest he tradition regional the of Joseph Louis, State(A SouthwestMinnesota at colleagues older his businessmen); ’90s the ideologues, ’80s the yuppies, ’70s the members of the ’60s generation (so very different from, opposed to, l atcptd Soty fe hs ria tee e eevd a received we there arrival his after Shortly anticipated. olm l rmis o hs a a udt wo idis television, disdains who Luddite a day this to remains olm olm—American Jeremiah, cranky missionary for subversive ideas, But ’60s people are a restless lot, and n turning to a discarded H olm works within a tradition that includes writers like writers includes that tradition a within works olm l! ugg ls. ed hr By cubr. Send scrubbers. Boy Chore Send lost. Luggage elp! Anderson, Faulkner, mato); and the writers the and Amato); I n 1985, Southwestn 1985, Minnesota State agreed to Old as an antidote to the disconcerting Etter, Keillor, eie Le Meridel Words: Farming H olm selected as “mentors” as selected olm U H merican vulgarity that vulgarity American niversity in China. This China. in niversity olm was not about to sit A bbey, lec Bond, lec Dylan; most English H Adrian was e

Clorox bleach. Send Comet cleanser and SOS pads.” We packed a him measure developments in late ’80s America, especially the box, sent it airmail at 40 or 50 dollars, and listened, bemused, for expanding web of rules, regulations, slogans, and plans imposed by the explosion. What we got was a series of updates recording power structures here and there. “Henry [Thoreau] found his angle a gradual unraveling . . . and then a refocusing, and then a of vision at his cabin on Walden Pond,” Holm wrote in The Windows quirky affection.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx of Brimnes. “I had to go outside the United States to find mine.” The China was a timely subject in 1990, and Coming Home Crazy: An business model increasingly used by American colleges is not much Alphabet of China Essays got Holm a review in the New York Times. different from the old Soviet system of committees, studies, strategic Like anyone else who spent time in a “developing nation” in the late goals, five-year plans, personal development plans, annual progress 1980s and early 1990s, Holm encountered enough deprivation, reports on Great Leap Forward plans. One of the more entertaining idiocy, and bureaucratic intransigence to make America look almost stories in Coming Home Crazy is the tale—familiar to everyone at attractive; the book is in part a rant against Chinese banking, bound Southwest—of Holm’s confrontation with the personnel department feet, bad food, and flies. However, also like others who went abroad employee who demanded to see Holm’s Social Security card before during this time, Holm met many bright and energetic students, re-enrolling him on the state payroll. “An original, not a copy,” she had some unforgettable experiences exploring an Other even more told Holm, pointing to page 8795 of the Federal Register, Form 1-9 exotic than Iceland, and came home, if not crazy, 903/06/870. “She was, like every Chinese certainly altered. bureaucrat I met, ‘only doing my job,’” Holm in China, Holm was seen as an American, wrote, just before quoting Whitman: “Resist and some aspects of America began to look much, obey little.”xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx pretty darned attractive. “I found myself . . . holm returned to China in 1988, and again simultaneously feared and heroized in 1992 for another teaching assignment; he for being a symbol of something I also traveled to Panama, Tasmania, Japan, and wasn’t even sure I could stomach any Madagascar. In 1999 he returned to Reykjavík, longer,” he wrote in amazement. “I even forgot a city dramatically transformed from what he my old anger at American politics of the had seen 20 years before. His travel essays eighties.” But Holm is one of those old, weird showed up in magazines, and he made guest Americans, and the yardstick of China helped appearances on PBS’s The Savvy Traveler. In

— BH 19 20 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist (2004). Piano Black Windows Brimnes of and to a large degree for the poems of providescontenttheof most foressaysthe in books. own his writing unexpectedly, then, experience away and from southwestern Minnesota workshops summer each writing spend could teaching he where end world’s the at outpost in described both Lake, to Thoreau’s cabin at Walden, or H from home. few mental islands—into enclaves of alternative life, Eccentric Islands, olm bought a small home on the island’s north shore—a place akin I celand was far enough from the thickening center that H olm converted these geographical i dsrpin f lcs bod however, abroad, places of description Amid Cabins of Minnesota of Cabins Ernest Oberholtzer’s cabin at Rainy some distant (2007)—some Eccentric Islands, Eccentric H O thers—and a olm far away Playing the The N ot ae ad itre ad h mnts dtis f ml places materialistic, chaotic, our small in lost of been has that details all of minutestus reminds the and histories and or names inform to not deafen. and is distract to television but entertain, of function the Where safe. nor free neither us make police secret the of powers other and shoes,” national scanners, modern unlike and trust. history each other’s who share people with filled Minneota the to similar is too hostile, too unsuited to thoughwhatofthey / tooaresure.” not forward / from and everyone smiles and is / happy; doing their part, / fully is movebackward toany see, / ordinary,without forward,though moving you as everything, / were course of / though policies up, certain brought if embarrassing / prove only would it it, America: “When nothing has over happened there all university, is no need the / to at mention talk official like sounds Wuhan—1992” is / bowl one “O bowl.’” another / that than beautiful more suffered, necessarily have trees that / denial your view, your only is ‘That saying: / laugh, they bowl,’ beautiful a is ‘This fashionable today: “I relativism postmodern the satirizes Árnason” Kristján “To poem on attack “an that hope the abroad. The latest “ H l cniud i ciiu o pwr tutrs t oe and home at structures power of critique his continued olm The I celandic community described in communitydescribedcelandic eia wee tubrns hde cameras, hidden “thumbprints, where America, American ID f you say in poem or song to your fellow man: / ’s, armed national guards, wiretaps, X-rayed wiretaps, guards, national armed ’s, H H olm’s nature. raq could trigger a market rally.”market Thea trigger could Iraq olm knew as a boy in that it is a place a is it that in boy a as knew olm N ews” in an ironic poem of that title is H H olm’s careful attention to attention careful olm’s ere is a worlda eretoois strange, The Windows of Brimnes of Windows The xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx fficial in fficial Talk I is t sound-bite world. Essays on departed aunts and uncles and on the The focus of Bill Holm’s own song has swung from the home year and circumstances of his birth echo some of the material in place to the larger world, back to the home place, out to an even The Heart Can Be Filled, and join Icelanders in America with larger world, and thence to the physical and mental retreat of cabins Icelanders in Iceland. But the parallels suggest that the Brimnes in Minnesota and Iceland. It moves from Self to Other to Self in alternative, like the Minneota alternative, is endangered, going if Other(s). This ambivalence is not unusual in the experience of ’60s not gone. Corruption, if not compulsory, is omnipresent, spreading people, or Midwesterners, or Americans, as we seek simultaneously inexorably from New York to Baghdad, Ulaanbaatar, and even to transcend our place and to celebrate what makes us what we Brimnes. The Windows of Brimnes ends with a chapter titled “Fog,” are. Beyond spinning entertaining stories of Minneota and China which describes the recent industrialization of the island, and the and Iceland, Holm helps us examine the process we all go through, decline of fishing. Holm concluded darkly, “The Icelanders are and points out opportunities and dangers. He himself says it best giving up their only real patrimony—the emptiness and wisdom of toward the beginning of The Windows of Brimnes: “We do not nature—for money.” xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx see reality—or nature—directly, but always through a note of acquiescence, of loss beyond repair, of the futility of a window of some sort. These windows are often resistance creeps into late Holm. “Oh what a time it was, I have a physical, the window of our ‘place,’ our experience, our photograph,” Paul Simon once sang about old folks looking back at particular angle onto nature. But they can be mental, the only memory they had; Holm, too, used old photos to suggest . . . the boundaries we erect around the imagination.” things irrevocably lost to an indifferent world: “Now all flesh is The important thing, Holm tells us again and yet again, is never to gone, names too. / Nothing left but brown images, / lit by silent forget . . . and never to settle. flashes, / the squeezed bulb in the photographer’s hand.” Some of Holm’s best poems are elegies on deceased friends like Mike Doman and Alec Bond, public figures like Frederick Manfred and Paul Wellstone. The final poem in Playing the Black Piano—which Holm — called “the theme of the book”—is titled “Letting Go of What Cannot David Pichaske is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. His books include Be Held Back.” It begins, “Let go of the dead now” and Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place; UBO3: A Season in Outer Mongolia; A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Society in the Sixties; Movement in the Canterbury Tales: concludes, “Practice / your own song. Now.” Chaucer’s Literary Pilgrimage; and Beowulf to Beatles: Approaches to Poetry. He has published Bill Holm, Leo Dangel, and other poets through his Spoon River Poetry Press.

— BH 21 22 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist least, that man went backto college the next day. door. his on knock to happened whosalesman book it? of what’s sense the an some be love.you what attentionto pay Coming to aSaner H ComingCrazy means Home Thatalso Coming . on earth. When he worked two years as a teacher in China, he wrote that idea the of out shocked was he ago I open. eyes your keep to have you inaccurately, “The heart can be filled anywhere on earth.” taxes and voting for the county commissioner. he has a home in music, and he has lived there for years, paying his celandic road and sees a house he likes, he may well buy it. Yearsit. buy well may he likes, he house a sees and road celandic Eros especially for opinion. For Bill it’s clear that to be sane in his world means that you that means world his in sane be to that clear it’s Bill For O by Robert Bly Bill Holm ne has to go to a lot of places to find Bill ros in music, and in a sofa, even in food. Maybe there is thereMaybe food. in even sofa, a in and music, in Eros olm. H e’s been known to talk for three hours to a to hoursthree for talk to known e’sbeen I f you can’t hug or marry an opinion, I t has to do with do to has t I f Bill is driving along a jagged a along driving is Bill f merica is the best place best the is America H As he says, somewhat H ome Sane, or maybeSane,or ome olm. For one thing, ros. There has to has There Eros. I n one case, at case, one n O f course, n cuty o h next. the to country one rider. sleep through the night. Distinguished Artist. Rockefeller, andNationalEndowmentfor theArts fellowships, hewasalsothe2000McKnight what hehascalled“theexpressivemen’smovement.”and father of Guggenheim, Arecipient of Robert Bly,namedMinnesota’s firstpoetlaureate in2008,isapoet,editor, translator, storyteller, — television. We have aright to feel genuinely proud of him. mediocrity,encourageactivelyand thoughtlessness, thatforces of gratitude for Bill’s tenacity in defending literary culture in the face Bill book carries you from one night to the next,the to night one from you carries book A H olm says that a book is not a place where you I t’s more like a Pony

think we all feel an immense immense an feel all we think I E xpress Advice

Someone dancing inside us has learned only a few steps: the “Do-Your-Work” in 4/4 time, and the “What-Do-You-Expect” waltz. He hasn’t noticed yet the woman standing away from the lamp, the one with black eyes who knows the rumba, and strange steps in jumpy rhythms from the mountains of Bulgaria. If they dance together, something unexpected will happen. If they don’t, the next world will be a lot like this one.

—from The Dead Get By with Everything, 1991

— BH 23 24 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist sorrow, glory in each of his books. Music brings joy, mitigates ngel of Angel walked through room after room as filled with books as a hive is with Paddock’sJoe and Bill’shonor climbed aboard a bus from Minneapolis for a publication reading to 11 are There creator. their individualas as essaysgatherintothatbooks and poems pens Bill will never bepoororalone. like core. its at wisdom the penetrate finally may often you years music many over of enough piece a practice you if that contends Bill poems, 1985. Because 1985. in daywinter a on so was this much howunderstood but meetings was published when hewas book 41. first whose man a for bad not utero; in two perhaps or A man whose generative frontal lobe brims with ideas and words, A o Bl, ok ae sustenance. are books Bill, For by Emilie Buchwald A Well Tempered Island H aydn, Mozart, and Brahms, as intimates, you, like Bill like intimates,you, as Brahms, and Mozart, aydn, man with music in his soul, he celebrates its celebrates he soul, his in music with man I eath (see (see Death vn h cned, tvs f the off staves contends, he humanity—even, enhances f you are lucky enough to count Bach and select others, select and Bach count to enough lucky are you f Boxelder Bug VariationsPhebe Bug , Boxelder was chicken to drive to Minneota in a blizzard, a in Minneota to drive to chicken was I . Safe and warm in Bill’s home, Bill’s in warm and SafeTongues Earth . Playing the Black Piano). Black the Playing H l tte i pit wt a lat one least at with print, in titles olm nw hs rm u earliest our from this knew I H anson’s I n one of my favoritemy of one n Sacred Hearts, Sacred H olm, I I variety of eateries or over takeout at the Milkweed office. a at food good over discussed were manuscripts these metaphor; Imaginary; and TravelsIslands: Real Eccentric Earth; on Anywhere Filled Be Can Heart The Essays;China Everything; with By Get Dead The of Alphabet and Bill world, the into Variations arrived onmy desk asatyped,three-inch-high bundle. around in his book bag, though the 1984 manuscript of elegant event; Bill wore his tuxedo. poetry.feasttoon jackets, and roastpig of heartily eatto hats,and scarves, glintingon snowdark, the of out in came people hundred a than more weather, the of defiance in There, hall. town need to live without abooknearto hand at any time. anywhereplaceis theirconvenient.since place, their in books keep to obligation no felt Bill that realized I bookshelves. support to exist house that of walls The honeycomb. Yes, indeed there was. Since those boxelder bugs flew out flew bugs boxelder those Since was. there indeed Yes, “What do you hewrote. think?” “I hauls he pad legal yellow a on scribbled life start books Bill’s O n that fierce, cold evening, we drove to the event at the event droveat thatthe fierce, evening, to cold we n . “Chewed over” is not an idle an not is over”“Chewed Piano. Black the Playing and have chewed over chewed have I s there anything init?” I n that house, there is no thatthereis house,n Coming Home Crazy: An Crazy: Home Coming Boxelder Bug I t wasan t Ghent Bill’s desire to share—hospitality, books, and music—has fueled A toast to Bill Holm: Your friends, who number his peregrinations not only to every part of Greater Minnesota but, many, rejoice in you. Play on! Write on! Keep the Angel among other destinations, to Australia, China, Iceland, Madagascar, of Death so busy dancing, reading, and drowsing that and Mexico. At the events I have attended, Bill begins by reading he forgets all about you. Skál! I predict that your books will poems written by other poets, enthusiastically pointing out how have staying power; they have the tensile strength of ideas keenly marvelous they are. He often ends the evening at the piano, if there felt and stories delightfully told, with a zesty appreciation for the is one, playing Joplin rags, or Bach, or music suggested by the fact that in spite of every sorrow and trial, life is worth living to audience. On these occasions, he is gregarious and convivial, except the fullest. for an occasional jeremiad to the assembled multitude, as if his give-them-hell doppelganger had suddenly seized the microphone to lambaste the evils of corporate greed and national stupidity, bearing witness to mankind’s unregenerate nature. Bill loves his land—everybody else’s land as well—too much to suffer fools and scoundrels in silence, and he writes about what sticks in his craw. In fact, when you scrutinize his oeuvre, the recurring themes are not confined to the beauty of the arts or the delights of the table, or even the pleasure of playing music for one’s self. Far more frequently Bill’s meditations approach the age-old questions: What is the good life? How do you live it? He offers some answers, and on his journeys, he practices what he preaches: living with integrity, decency, and honor; bullying no one; valuing every individual; connecting with others in this fractured world over food — or drink or talk, for the fun of it. Though his name means “island” Emilie Buchwald is publisher emeritus of Milkweed Editions and publisher of The in Old Norse, Bill is well and truly connected to the main. Gryphon Press. She was the 2002 McKnight Distinguished Artist.

— BH 25 26 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist nw e ant ed uh of much read hasn’t he know I played in the band, suffered the taunts that studious kids have to have kids studious that taunts the suffered band, the in played yard. the in car a shed, the Snoozlebeakergun, lying lowthe bedroom,woundedin a tractor in cap a for played.32disabledin standingchildren,thevisitingwith plaster. the in cracks through oozing honey walls, the in dwelt father, an energetic mother, animals from dogs and pigs to bees that occasionally piled with books. cabinet a and postersold with stairwaylined a and spirits,wonderful of cookbooks, full reside, sometimes pheasants dead where player, books, heaps of mail, mountains of musical scores, a freezer videotape assorteda to onlyattached TV a records,vinyl and tapes cassette amazingly newspapers, books, telephone, persistent a ashtrays,pistol, .32-caliber broken old an to knife Sabatier a from anything containing drawers kitchen magazines, books, mail, of threadbare stuffed bear (Snoozlebeaker), a full a shelf of spices, piles friends, by artwork teeth, animal driftwood, stones, friends, of collapsing slowly a childrenthe in ancestors piano, picturesofand a books, of full house resides he where Minnesota, Minneota, W

by John Calvin Rezmerski Holm Grown H a burly Township—a Prairie Swede in farm to used family is e smbd ak m “hr dd Bill did “Where me asks somebody hen H e wore big glasses, collected stamps, collected glasses, big wore e H l’ wiig fl a i i of is it as full writing, olm’s H olm grow up?” up?” grow olm H e thus” has informed has thus” read. has everythinghe toadjacencies are pages own thathispage, the on is where place the that me to clear seems Barbara)—it Jon Ibsen, binges—Swift, his witnessed havingPoe, of pastiches juvenile his travel. through different himselfopinion. re-created he that and China, ofsort cliché. E found influential friends, traveled abroad. For a while, his life was a musicians, and writers other with acquainted became essays, and piano in bars, went to newspaper. graduate school, taught college, student wrote poems the for wrote who nerd popular a ol nvr ae fre; i mte togt ed e good a be he’dlawyer. thought mother his farmer; a make never would bad. and teachers good badly, or courteously another one treating people small-town books, of full was house nue ad rae o sen te on rwn salr n the in rearview mirror of his own carasheleft inpursuit of excitement. smaller growing town the seeing of dreamed and endure, ’ve been told that told been I’ve H s ol icue a in tahr a aiy red whose friend family a teacher, piano a included world is H e sang in church,sangin e rebelled school. in D H eue it refute “I proclamation kicking famous Johnson’s r. assler, Spinoza, Liszt, Joplin, Twain, Kafka (Franz and (FranzTwain, Kafka Joplin, Liszt, Spinoza, assler, ventually hecamehome. H earing him talk of his early reading, having read H affirm “I cluster: tone olm’spiano-whacking H olm didn’t really grow up until he visited he until up grow reallydidn’t olm I n college,n became he H s ahr nw he knew father is H olm grew up grew olm H ae a have I played e The Sea Eats What It Pleases

it thus!” Kitchen, piano, fjords, and whiskey are statements as If you turn your back to the ocean vital to the conversation as classicism, pentameter, and the Pisan Do you think the tide will not find you Cantos. So on to the next phase of growth. If it decides to rise a little higher His agenda is to meld high-culture intellectualism with the Than usual, to swallow an extra helping fundamental skills of being a good neighbor. With all the surfaces Of gravel, to suck on your bones to clean deeply covered, he had to push hard. The task demanded that he Its palate? The sea eats what it pleases sharpen his ironic skills, but I’m tired of hearing him described Whether you face it or give it your back. as a humorist primarily. He is like the drummer in the stern of No use having opinions about this. the ancient boat, earnestly trying to turn work into play. But the sea does not hate you, or imagine Walt “Who touches this [book] touches a man,” That you have wounded it with your avarice. Whitman said. The same is true of Holm’s books. Who You cannot blaspheme the honor of water grows in reading them wears the author’s boots on Or insult the tide for tasting of salt. the perpetual tramp toward real maturity. Only humans, so newly risen from fish, Imagine drowning each other for reasons. —from Playing the Black Piano, 2004

— — John Calvin Rezmerski’s poems have appeared in publications as varied as the Wall Street The writer Carol Bly, who died in 2007, once said: “What I admire so much about Bill Holm is that Journal, Mennonite Life, New Letters, Chelsea, Nursing Outlook, Poems of Exotic he knows inside the ordinary person is a need and joyous desire—even if it doesn’t show at first—for Places, The Party Train, the Sumac Reader, and Tales of the Unanticipated. He taught deeply felt literature. . . . One of his great gifts to Minnesota is his constant reminder that inside each creative writing and journalism at Gustavus Adolphus College for 35 years. of us is a longing for strong feeling and the ability to enjoy a strong artistic expression.” “The Sea Eats What It Pleases” was Carol Bly’s favorite Holm poem.

— BH 27 28 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist ak have trouble getting these Minnesotans to talk in class.” in talk to Minnesotans these getting trouble have ’m going to a to going “I’m under abushel basket of blond hair.H first day tellingnewa u h kes akn, odru tl fo a ul ie f reading, of life traveling, full thinking, andwriting. a from talk wonderful talking, keeps he but matters. other dozen a and failings, of translation Bly’s medicine, heart Manitoba, A hour.”an about better bestrong andalert if you want to getinonthe talk. Bill Burke.When to talk to alert, strong, visit. the to no said Johnson visit. might ot Spinoza, bout A D by Lawrence Owen Paying Attention couple of months ago, this big pink man phoned and said, and phoned man pink big this ago, months of couple A r. Johnson was ill, feeling weak. Boswell said Boswell weak. feeling ill, was Johnson r. t an t among taciturn Minnesotans, in walked a big pink student A ugust faculty get-together, a colleague said, “Youmaysaid, colleague get-together,facultya ugust G ustavusfaculty memberwhat toexpect. myon Then U s he drove his Buick across the prairie, he talked.prairie,he the across Buick drovehis he As I nitarian service in service nitarian ead Whitman, celand, aas books, Obama’s U nderwood. e was talking. H s ar a tre white, turned has hair is H olm comes visiting, you visiting, comes olm H ke h hd o be to had he knew e ’ll pick you up in up you pick I’ll Bush’s Gynt, Peer dmund Burke Edmund I eadr in celanders H e was e that coffin lid, stretched outon his back. intogot knees, shallowhisbathtub. a likeon looking down got Bill lay lid upside there coffin. The down, a to stonelid a upon came we I and philosophizing with alittle striped bug. dancing while seen as world the of view glorious that Variations, Milkweed later, bit a then And “I don’t think you’ve these.” seen magazines, and manuscripts. books, of full bags canvas his with yard house. the our across charge of would front in park cars) his big see likes would (he We Caprice night.Chevy and noon, morning, them did he bugs, boxelderdoing was he When he’sgot. all it gives he then and hard oeok n h wud rt dw hs e bxle variations, little songs sounding like Chopin, orBach,Joplin. boxelder new his down write would he and notebook while driving from Minneota to St. Peter. Kool,a thenstartplaying theboxelder composed variationshad he to the piano. n the churchyard he said some verses from We visited a medieval church in a village near the bugs. boxelder about stories love and poems be would These Bill’s like Lance likeBill’s Then he wouldsay,he Then “H H e would cross one leg over the other, light a Camel or rmstrong and Tiger Woods. Tiger and Armstrong ello,”say,canvasand a bag in arounddig N o knock. o knock. iin published Editions I O n he would come, straight ut would come the music Gray’s “E legy” and then H e trains really trains e oedr Bug Boxelder Dorset coast. H e “This is what it will be like,” he said. “But mine will have to be ak longer than this one.” Bill had been studying mortality for a good You can’t think about Bill Holm without thinking about Iceland. long while before he noticed death out there at the lilac bush in He goes over there to a house called Brimnes and after a nine his Minneota backyard. And it’s our good fortune that Bill figured months that has lasted for years, Milkweed Editions publishes a out that he can keep death out there by playing Haydn. I can’t play set of superb essays called The Windows of Brimnes. Music, birds, Haydn, but Bill convinced me that death is in my backyard and that religion, ancestors, language, politics, modernity, geography—the I better do something to keep him out there. boxelder bug has become a house in Iceland. I’ve been listening to Bill talk Iceland for over 40 years. He showed me a new poem about ak eider ducks in Iceland and I am happy to tell his readers that it’s a “When’s the last time you read Conrad?” Or Emerson, or Yeats, or really good poem. Bill’s not through. He’s still playing Haydn and Spinoza. “When was the last time you played Chopin?” Schubert, or Iceland keeps showing him new things. Joplin, or Liszt. Bill is always turned on to a writer and a composer. Keep paying attention, Bill. And showing us He named some travel writer I had never heard of, and then held how to pay attention. forth at length on travel writing. Back in the early years of his immersion in Whitman, Bill told about a visitor calling on Whitman in Camden, about Whitman in a rocking chair in a room filled with books and manuscripts, about Whitman poking around among the papers with his walking stick. Listen to Bill and he will let you into his mind. It’s filled to bursting, yet he keeps stuffing more in. It’s — been Spinoza lately, but one of these days it will be another writer, Lawrence Owen is professor emeritus at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where he another composer. taught English from 1963 to 1996.

— BH 29 30 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist call this poemathank-you card. artists throughout the state, the nation, and, in truth, the world. and iconoclasts. and conversation—out on the Minnesota prairie. For decades now, Bill has offered his place as a rent-free hostel to passing writers, musicians, Bill by Barton Sutter Not SleepingatBill Holm’s House H for music and literature especially, but also for the arts of cooking and cooking of arts the for literatureespecially,also and but music arts—for the for ark of kind a is Minneota in olm’s house H Bound for points west A passenger onthe Minnesota E Who are you? Ianswer that Iam And, outinthe yard, abarred owl asks,Who? Where are we going? The clock says two, Full of booksandthe ghosts of hotarguments. I’m apassenger, myself, inthis crooked old house What could bestranger than O Toward strange destinations, like O And passengers rocketing into the dark Who talks of the tombs andthe grass A poetfar better than Ihad remembered, But settle in,anyhow, with avolume bySandburg, Too wired with coffee andwild ideas to dream This bedistoo loud to sleep on,andIam Bearing aFrosty the Snowman motif. I amgreeted byred flannel sheets Which aside. I set Turning backthe spread, A small stuffed bearandpinkflamingo, Reclining onthe bedclothes: Which willnotgooff inthis poem. There’s adouble-barreled shotgun, I is long-term hospitality is just one more manifestation of the big-hearted generosity Bill has shown toward fellow toward shown has Bill generosity big-hearted the of manifestation more one just is hospitality long-term is n the corner of my narrow room, — Canby and Mars. maha? xpress, maha. I’ve benefited from Bill’s brotherly encouragement many times. You could English and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, Superior. Wisconsin, English andcreative writingatthe of University Barton Sutter, poems,essays, andstories, awriterlives of inDuluth,Minnesota, andteaches — For nearly athousand years. Preserved byfarmers And I Cigar smoke and whiskey, With full ahouse of music, Tis also agift to becomplex andornery, aGift to“Tis Tis! beSimple?” Tis! That sweet Shaker tune O And Bill banging outhymns And how did it getto bedaylight Who done it? Whoknocked meout? I As patiently asahorse-drawn cab I O Which I envy. Ican’t count sheep Cough andhack andgrowl inhis sleep, My host, the polar bearof Americanliterature, I canhear, inthe next compartment, my comrade, n astory of Sherlock H n the outer room, aharpsichord waits n the downstairs piano, just now r the number of booksinthis house. celandic sagas olmes. Messenger of Failure by Vidar Hreinsson

In the summer of 1850, my great-great-grandfather Jón Ingjaldsson of Eyjardalsá in Bárdardalur Valley in northern Iceland got his wife Gudny Stefánsdóttir pregnant for the second time. In the fall, they hired her young half-sister Helga as their housemaid. Jón impregnated her, too, just before his annual midwinter depression set in, with worries that he would run out of hay and his sheep would starve to death. My great-grandfather Gudni was born in April of 1851, and his half-sister Sigrídur in the fall. Her mother Helga left the farm and became a housemaid elsewhere until she married, but little Sigrídur remained in Eyjardalsá. Her aunt Gudny made no distinction between her and her half-siblings. Sigrídur was possibly the first love of the great poet Stephan G. Stephansson, but he emigrated from Iceland to America in 1873. She married Fridgeir Jóakimsson in 1877, much against her aunt Gudny’s will. Gudny didn’t attend the wedding in the church, and that day she handled the churn more harshly than usual. The newlyweds farmed in Hlídarendi, next to Eyjardalsá, until 1880, when they set off for America. Sigrídur was pregnant, but died on the ship, giving birth to twins who also died. Fridgeir continued his journey alone, carrying their humble belongings with him, toward the promises of the new world, which turned out to be a failure. He took up the surname Bardal, married again, and was the father of Gunnar who gave Bill Holm books, Pauline who gave him music, and Rose who gave him “her crazed longing for God.” — BH 31 32 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist apart. details— small the of increasing. May Bill is self-destruction toward tendency our but Failure, of Music The in about wrote Bill failure” “wholesome the embrace longer no We losingit, Billas has already through observed his Brimnes-window. true. is works his in presents Bill to imaginary, selective image of to to low life, failures, window, himself a migratory bird revealing the significance of bugs, sons G sons Bardal, Fridgeir of names the with Christ’sofhistory theinto one.childhood,boundall and children, up bringing youth, for morals herbs, drinking about pamphletsand fewbooks a fact in is which book, worn and oldthis G Bill etne n h water,” the on sentence eal o ps ad rsn lvs ad h aiiy o eel their reveal to ability the significance. and lives, present and past of details islason, a lover of human talent, plants, and books. Theretalent,humanbooks.plants, loverof and a islason, “reach full consciousness asahuman.” A I I E merica of today.We of merica H hs evc t hmn esn Bill reason, human to service his n n Sigrídur’s luggage, there was at least one book. When eyhn cnet. e ed wrns o te insignificant the of awareness need We connects. verything l i Mnet i 20, e ok e o i cousin his to me took he 2002, in Minneota in olm udni andStefán, butonly the initials of Sigrídur. Said arne hmevs no a into themselves arrange “Seabirds I celand, wooden bowls, music— H h ol wy o ep h wrd rm falling from world the keep to way only the olm continue to tell us about the significance I celanders tend to believe that the image the that believe to tend celanders I celand, a subversive, critical contrast il bevd u o hs Brimnes- his of out observed Bill I G tee s oe rt w are we truth some is there f udny Stefánsdóttir, and her her and Stefánsdóttir, udny H olm has created an an created has olm in a constant effort

I t was markedwas t I visited I found D aren ia Hensn a ieay coa, rtc ad dtr i te xctv drco o te Reykjavík the independent scholars. Academy, amultidisciplinarycommunityof of director executive the is editor, and critic, scholar, literary a Hreinsson, Vidar — Music for an old pump organ from The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth, 1996

Pauline was buried among the Bardals in the graveyard next then went to work. First, she arranged her long legs on the organ to the Icelandic country church in Lincoln County. In 1922, Pauline bench, carefully folding them between two wooden knee guards picked out the congregation’s new reed organ, and played it for below the keyboard. Thus constricted, she pumped, and while services there for almost forty years, until the church, a victim of checking the stops with one hand, slid over the keys with the other, rural urbanization and of Icelanders who refused to reproduce or playing the chords from Handel’s “Largo.” “The mice have not eaten stay on the farm, closed its door for lack of business. While a few the bellows,” she announced with satisfaction, then launched into miles to the west, the Poles sensibly planted their Catholic Church an old hymn with both hands. We played for each other for a while, in a hollow protected from the wind, the Icelanders defied Minnesota Pauline marveling at my clean fingering. She knew, I think, that by building on a rise in the only ridge of hills on that flat prairie. she had some responsibility for my love of playing, and was proud On even a calm day at that wind-swept knoll, the church windows of herself, and of me, but this was not the sort of thing Icelanders rattled, shingles flapped, and the black granite gravestones seemed discussed openly with each other. Skill could be remarked on, but to wobble. the heart was private and disliked language. Pauline and I drove out to that church a few years before her When we finished, she swept up the old poison in a newspaper, death. She carried a shopping bag full of flowers and rat poison. She opened her yellow skull-and-crossboned boxes, and laid down a had a key for the back door of the church and we went up through the fresh lunch for any rodents who might presume to make a meal of minister’s dressing room into the sanctuary. The room, carpentered God’s own organ bellows. Even though the church would never likely in good oak, was furnished only with chairs, pews, organ, pulpit, be opened, nor the organ publicly played there again, such things and the simple altar crowned by a wood cross; no statues, paintings, ought to be attended to for their own sake. Who knew? Perhaps the bric-a-brac—nothing but that wood, goldened by afternoon light dead a few feet away liked an occasional sad tune and didn’t fancy from the pale yellow windows. Wind seemed to come up from inside the idea of rats interfering with their music. the church, whooshing over the fine dust that covered everything. “Nobody’s cleaned it since last year. It’s a shame.” Pauline muttered,

— BH 33 34 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist them, only the dry wind of a new world that promised them and them all of us promised so much.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx that world new a of wind dry the only them, following empire no progeny, no church, dead a of graveyard the on all of them. The row read: two or flower a put graves,then the off swept She errand.next her performed there and bag, shopping her of contentsthe of rest the graveyardwiththe to proceeded She nostalgia.melancholy of sort i “ And 7/25 —8/2 1889 Pauline locked the church carefully, looking back at it with a with it at back carefully,looking church the locked Pauline 1890 ­­1890 I will be between Rose and de, ihn fw er te o ws ul sx ed in dead six full; was row the years few a within ndeed, R P OS ALL — 1956 E 1843 —1899 FRIDGEIR G unnar,” she said, “in not too long.” 1887 —1961 1887 1851 —1943 GUD GUNNAR L AUG by Einar Már Gudmundsson

“Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Neither—I am an Icelander.” “Democrat or Republican?” “Icelander.” “Black or white?” “Icelander.”

This conversation can be found in Bill Holm’s book Coming Home When Icelandic travelers came along later and met this young Crazy, based on his year living in China. I think that Bill is more man, fluent in Icelandic, they asked, “Are you an Icelander?” Icelandic than most Icelanders. He knows his origins and ancestry, “No,” he replied, “I am a Skagafjördur native.” as well as the places—many places. Bill’s forefathers are of course from East Iceland—Vopnafjördur Bill is so emphatically proud of us that it is tempting to deceive and nearby areas—but these last summers he has lived in him. He is not allowed to know the truth about all the chaos, all Skagafjördur, at Hofsós, so the people there and natural wonders the greed and graft and bullshit, because we are the epitome of a like the mountain Tindastóll and the sea have been a fountain of civilized culture in his eyes, cosmopolitans in touch with their past, inspiration for his poetry and stories. crackerjack storytellers, pure geniuses. We would not be worse as a people if we would always ask: In his thinking, to be an Icelander is an entire school of “What would Bill Holm think about that?” philosophy. He reminds me sometimes of the Native boy fostered by an Icelandic family in Canada because he was an orphan. Translated from the Icelandic by Cathy Josephson

— BH 35 36 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist names andmost coffee shops were shut. their announced streets deserted where towns small numberless through plains endless over hours Wefive well.drovemywentfor trip sure making were who people the of one was and time the at Minneapolis in lived who Sigurjónsson, Árni companion, my and cousin his so pioneers had settled. the where Minneota, of, fond so was he town the see to if anyone canever show menothing, I’llhave everything. seen nothing to there.” see There’sfor? there go to want you do “What said, they eyebrows and up hosts’ shot My Minneota. town, small distant a mentioned number of other places. -50°C. reached had temperatures when spell, cold great the after shortly Minnesota. to Midwest, the to I had met Bill in Minneapolis, but he was on his way to California, The truth was that I “That’s exactly what exactly“That’s what me asked hosts my When by Einar Már Gudmundsson Independent People n O ctober of 1995 of October ur readings were in and around Minneapolis and D aren islason, teacher and gardener, received me received gardener, and teacher Gislason, I had read Bill received an invitation to come to the to come invitationto an received I want to see,”to want I et hr i Fbur o 1996, of February in there went I H would most like to see see to like most would I olm’s books and was curious said. “N said. I othing.”Because I visited a I celandic U .S., I apartment. I sweater, with gray hair andacat onhis shoulder. roof, whatever they might have been doing there inthe biting frost. stop right in front of a white wooden house with chairs on the porch the in there Midwest. out Yet other we hadn’teach been to driving are for long houses when the similar car did how indeed of view in withhouse furniture onthe porch roof.” cats. denying that they were accompanied by the smell that accompanies have his street address. time merged the generations and told its own story.own itstold and generations the merged time every Icelandichigh-school student. Universe), which won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1993 and is now required reading for He including novels, writers. and stories, short living essays, poems, most-translatedwritten has and best -loved Iceland’s of one is Gudmundsson Már Einar — Yul hv t pro m, said me,” pardon to have “You’ll D especially instructions, clear called be hardly could These hs ae es: oe 0 as ie tee n tees no there’s and there lived cats 30 some sense: made This “You’ll find the house right away,” said away,” right house the find “You’ll phoned we Minneota reached we When I realized immediately that aren was standing in the entrance, a slim man wearing a red a wearing man slim entrance,a the in standing was aren f you’re allergic to cats Iadvise you notto come in.” I had entered another world. D rn “hs s bachelor a is “this aren, Englar Alheimsins (Angels of the of (Angels Alheimsins Englar D D aren, since we didn’twe since aren, rn “I aren. Gramophones ’ te only the t’s H ere, Daren Gislason with Bill Holm met the eye from the very beginning, wind-up gramophones and “I always buy it if I run across it,” said Daren, and then pointed gramophones with trumpets, old 78 r.p.m. records, cupboards and to a little wooden chest. lockers and above them pictures of the Icelandic forebears who left “You can see where this one comes from,” he said. the Vopnafjörd area in the wake of volcanic eruptions and the death The workmanship, the carvings, were unmistakable, and of sheep. These people’s expressions contain something you might my anticipation grew as he opened the chest with a big key to call historical determination. There are congressmen and lawyers, show books and letters, original editions of Jónas Hallgrímsson*: thrice-married dignitaries who fathered more than 20 children, textbooks on mathematics, algebra, and astronomy translated by whose descendants were now dispersed throughout the United Jónas, and handwritten letters that could doubtless form the basis States and would phone one another if they ran across their bizarre for a pioneer saga if somebody could read the writing and the last names in phone books. language of their forebears. Upstairs there is a grand library with old books and new, and “You should maybe send these documents to the University of conspicuous in one corner 80 first-edition copies of Independent Iceland,” I said. People by Halldór Laxness. * Icelandic poet and natural scientist, 1807–1845.

— BH 37 38 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist today, where books are lent out. lent aretoday, books where run we kind library,the of library a wasn’ta it but unusual, up very was which set and books brought who pioneers only the were The all. and one imbeciles, were they that maintained the and read didn’t they but farms, best the took and year next the along came Belgians The universe. the of center the elsewhere.is it as good as not is here soil the hand, There are a few hills here, but obviously no mountains. County.Lincoln and Minneota in here up ended they until farther theykeptfarther goingso soybeans, and forwheat and soil richest the course of is which either, soil, black the of look the didn’tlike they and them around mountains wanted They plains. the of look hardcover original editions. in pages, yellowing the among there kept were lives nine their of becoming clear to me. they want to.” moved from farm to farm byfive horses and left there.” the town. than me to memorable less no is who gardener, and of and see to nothing was Translated fromtheIcelandicbyWincie Jóhannsdóttir “Look, the thing is,”thingthe said “Look, N man’sfor This passion nodded. I H “N ow the cats came along and peered into the chest as if one if as chest the into peered and along came cats the ow ere o, wouldn’tI dreamit,”of said n m acut f h tw wee there where town the of account my end I

D aren. “The “The aren. I t was a traveling library that was that traveling library a was t D D aren was slowly was People Independent aren. “They can come herecomeif can aren.“They I celandersdidn’t the like sao, teacher Gislason, E ven so, this is thisso,ven O n the other I I celanders celanders So I come here to this spare place in the summer, and sometimes in the winter when its spareness is magnified by snow and darkness. After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction—or, for that matter, of private destruction (why search so far away when they live right under our noses?), too much entertainment and not enough beauty, too much electricity and not enough light, too much lumber and not enough forests, too much real estate and not enough earth, too many books and not enough readers, too many runners and not enough strollers, too many freeways, too many cars, too many malls, too many prisons, too much security but not enough civility, too many humans but not enough eagles. And the worst excess of all: too many wars, too much misery and brutality—reflected as much in our own eyes as in those of our enemies. So I come here to this spare place. A little thinning and pruning is a good anodyne for the soul. We see more clearly when the noise is less, the objects fewer. When Americans ask me to describe my little house in Iceland, I tell them, not entirely disingenuously, that it is a series of magical windows with a few simple boards to hold them up, to protect your head from rain while you stare out to sea.

—from The Windows of Brimnes, 2007

— BH 39 40 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist like to have stand at my grave and tell people whomypeople havegravetellatto stand like and remembermorethananything else. that remarksBill’s moving is it ago, years many now Luverne, in farmhouse.When be in writing poetry or playing the piano in the parlor of an isolated to his friends, and generous with his praise for their work, whether it of marvelous writing, buthehas beenamodel of humanity, helpful did with my life, Bill would bemy choice. just what is slightness universal almost and pervasive of kind that fiction, consequences. its and shopping contemporarythatmost wryness typical it. upon doesn’tmatter,that something written ever has he right up there with, say, Thomas Paine or say,Paine with,Thomas there up right intelligence and insight of quality a me, to seems it has, readers essential contemporary writers. What he has had to say to fewcountry’s our of one is Bill distinction. high this received had and years, 30 least at for friends

I Notes from friendsandcolleagues Ho(l)mage: ’ be m hnr n piiee o e mn Bill among be to privilege and honor my been t’s United States PoetLaureate, 2004–2006|Garland, Nebraska Ted Kooser remember Bill’s dear friend Carol Bly once saying with saying once Bly Carol friend dear Bill’s remember I I’m talking about. think back to FredtoManfred’s back think I service memorial

And not only has he contributed a body was delighted to learn that he that learn to delighted was I d huh il os’ write doesn’t Bill though And I f could choose theperson could choose I merican fiction is about is fiction American H enry enry D was and what and was I avid Thoreau. avid haven’tcome I American H olm’s I’d I f I I was a walking exemplification of the essence of the of tradition the essence in spirit the of exemplification walking a was becomes excessively concentrated. be very passionatebe very about”). didn’tclassmates,tomy “ProfessorBill of seem some toaccording Whitman poems to the principles of linguistics (the latter of which, and red-headed, outspoken large, this from learn to thrilled were We Bill.” and to work with him. him, know to come to me for been has it pleasure a decency.What uniquely Minnesotan dose of self-effacing humor and fundamental a be to me to seems what Waltleavenedby withWhitman, crossed man, with a fierce love of music and literature. Think Thomas Paine tender generous, a essentially is he yet and polemical, downright broadly. of just not H d B B e was not just a great teacher of prose and poems. To us, he us, To poems. and prose of teacher great a just not was e ill what of much embodies ill Publisher andCEO|Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis H aniel Slager H e is eternally suspicious of power, particularly when it when particularly power, of suspicious eternally is e olm was known to his students in China as “Professor as China in students his to known was olm I eia ltrtr, u of but literature, American celandic eia rno sbet rnig from ranging subjects random American merson and Thoreau. and Emerson hold most dear in the tradition the in dear most hold I H e is fiercely independent, often eia scey more society American H e mistrusted the mistrusted e American authorities (of both the Communist and Republican regimes). He When I met Bill Holm many years ago I had been reading was never afraid to speak his mind. Getting to know this erudite David Quammen on the subject of island biodiversity. Due to the poet, musician, adventurer, and “bourgeois liberalist” outside the peculiarity and whirl of the billions of neurons in my head, I’ve classroom was a life-changing experience for many of his students always since this first meeting thought of Bill in terms of a floating in Xi’an, and they have remained close friends for the past 20 years. island he anchors here and there including a few weeks every winter His contempt for institutionalized bureaucracy was legendary on near our cold-weather home, a casita on a creek near the Mexican campus, and yet he maintained genuine and profound respect for the border. During this time we are unfashionably preoccupied with general down-to-earth folks, people like hotel maids, chefs, farmers, eating, drinking, smoking, and talking. We’ve even come to the drivers, school secretaries, postmen, street peddlers, and of course point in friendship where we exchange our freshest poems, a signal his students. He was resented by the university administration for moment of trust between poets. He was amused when we first met not observing some of the most bizarre official rules (like getting that I had even been through his little town of Minneota way back back to the guesthouse no later than midnight), but he was adored when I was researching my novel Dalva and had visited Pipestone by everyone else who got to know him as a mentor, as a friend, on my way to the Sandhills of Nebraska. as a man of integrity, and as a man of independence. His love for Bill is not larger than life, he’s as big as life, which is as large authentic Chinese cuisine lured him to many a restaurant, urban as anyone gets. He’s a singular man, not in the least to be confused and rural, big and small, where he entertained his friends with his with any other citizen or writer. I was there the day he played the newly composed poems or prose after the last course was served. piano to a group of local Arizona retirees at the community center Back in the late 1980s, Bill’s writings (many of which were in Patagonia, and he managed to enlarge the modest room into a translated into Chinese) made many of my compatriots realize cathedral. He is one of the few living writers I revere rather than that the American culture was much more than what Rambo and merely read, and I often think of him in terms of Sir Thomas Baywatch had to offer. He is the ultimate roaming poet in the Browne’s directive, “Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and tradition of ancient Chinese poet Su Dongpo, leaving behind his trail act but one man.” of poetic lines that inspire the readers to rediscover the significance Of course Bill is also a crank in the manner of the village of life, to enjoy things of beauty, and to seek spontaneity in this atheist, utterly embattled, Menckenesque, and quick to lather over increasingly commercialized world. anything that irritates him. He’s untranslatable except in his own Dingman Yu words. We cook rather elaborately and the only time he’s totally Teacher of Chinese | South High School, Minneapolis calm is when eating. Oddly our favorite annual meal is when Bill

— BH 41 42 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist can afford that 90-buck-a-quart low-rent scotch hefavors. in summer thisthat and Foundationin stepped dollars. for is he anti-magnet since an money some make Bill help could we how of subject with 19different winesIhad inFrance afew years ago. and prayer of form a is the through meal catches walleye.This and bass, rocka friend perch, ice—bluegills, Minnesota fish of package big a with arrives ope f times of couple A Jim H Writer |Suttons Bay,Michigan arrison rio Kilr and Keillor Garrison wouldn’t trade it for the 37-course lunch 37-course the for it wouldn’ttrade I I ’ s pesn ta Te McKnight The that pleasant so t’s ae pkn n the on spoken have I I celand at least he least at celand treeless I and and loyalgenerous friend. a as well as distinction of man a truly is Bill sky.” essay. To borrow from personal travel, memoir,forms —poetry,many among roamed has his harpsichord, which hekept inhis Minneota kitchen. Poetry of memories voice,playshe but harpsichord.bothand piano and thisRenaissanceis! man farmers and clubs, supper housewives of at various small-town Crazy patrons homes, nursing of corn detasselers, children and their parents in city parks, residents O Poetry called program a in storytellers and musicians and poets of crewmotley traveleda southwesternwithwe around Minnesota valuedlongand a began friendship. For five 1970s,summers in the from memory. “Sacred poem, myrecited he where Minnesota, ut Loud, financed by the Minnesota State Minnesota the by financed Loud, ut u aoe l, e s gfe ad rlin wie woe work whose writer brilliant and gifted a is he all, above But M oogle and voicing vociferously his preference for a cabin in cabin a for preference his vociferously voicing and Google y first meeting with Bill was at a poetry reading in St. Peter, celand over oneonLake Superior’s N Phebe H Poet |St.Paul haveI evenforgiven forinveighinghim againste-mail O f course, anson O ut Loud days is listening to Bill play Bach on playBach Bill listeningto days is Loud ut Emily I fell in love immediately, and that evening N ot only does he possess a glorious tenorglorious a possess onlyhe doesot D ickinson, ickinson, his is “brain wider than the D aze. What a piece of work rts Board. We read to readWe Board. Arts orth Shore! O H ne ofmyne happiest eart, Minnesota,”eart, As a teacher at Southwest Minnesota State University from done, he is one of the most generous people I have ever known. He 1970 to 2004, I consider myself privileged to have been able to call may condemn the arrogant and greedy, but he has unlimited praise Bill Holm my colleague for most of that time. Characteristic of and support for humble or unrecognized talent wherever and him are intelligence, passion, creativity, energy, knowledge, and whenever he sees it. honesty. No ivory tower professor, he made the classroom an arena Trying to imagine two Bill Holms would be like trying to for intellectual adventure and discovery. Students shook their imagine two Walt Whitmans or two Ella Fitzgeralds or two Winston heads in wonder at the natural phenomenon that stood before them, Churchills or two Emily Dickinsons. His whole persona comes with a whirlwind of curiosity and excitement. He cared, and they knew a clear mandate: DO NOT DUPLICATE—as if anyone could if they it. Bill always remained shockable at a student’s limited interest tried. in books or ideas and was on a perpetual mission to convert young Jim Heynen minds to the beauty and power of the printed word. As a colleague Writer | St. Paul and friend, he was unwavering in his support and generosity. I look forward to the next time I can exchange bear hugs with him. Bill Holm enters your life and takes up permanent residence A brainy bear. That’s Bill. Did I forget to say that as a writer he’s a in your psyche. He’s a big man, with a big talent and a big soul. No genius? To translate a compelling human voice onto the page the one who’s read Bill’s work, heard him regale an audience, listened way he can is a rare achievement. And, finally,I love his unrelenting to him play Haydn and Schubert on a grand piano, or thrilled intolerance of politicians who are a discredit to the Republic. to his vocal rendition of “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” is ever the Philip Dacey same again. He is a force of nature and he will be heard. is he Poet | New York City intimidating? Absolutely. But like his longtime friend and fellow writer, the late Carol Bly, he is respectful of the views of others. All I can’t count the number of times people have asked me if I of us in Minnesota, Iceland, and elsewhere who know and love him know Bill Holm, and when I tell them that I consider him one of have gained immeasurably by his presence in our lives. my best friends, they will say, “Oh, he’s one of my best friends too.” Louise Klas Though Bill often needs to escape all of us to get his writing work Attorney and teacher | St. Paul

— BH 43 44 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist Minnesota, and when writing about life in true. Bill is at home when writing about the inhabitants of Minneota, knew I Minnesota,small-town and rural aboutessays and poems his read is brilliantly clear, honest, perceptive, and provocative. When colleague for more than 30 years. around. happiness the spread to does already he what for large atlaureate writers. other of work the promoting in and writing, and knowledge his sharing in known—generous ever people generous most the of one is Bill deep. and broad is places.distant other and Madagascar, the event asked Bill to sit in with a them on stage, which he did, and adding discussed Bill’s work. The pink-haired punk rockers who organized librarian, the bikers, masseuse (and that was just twoone table!), all of whom knowledgeably grandmas, several member, council city a sheriff, local the with ballroom lakeside Wisconsin rooms. and music, prose, of direpunishmentfor charging warningbatteries boatcleaningthe poetry, in or fish signs with his motel roadside old sees: an even conversation, and does he everything ils edr cvr h woe pcrm h oc pce a packed once he spectrum: whole the cover readers Bill’s B I have known and admiredBillhave and known ill was reading something locally authentic and universally and authentic locally something reading was I H l’ sne f euy n pae eebrts across reverberates place and beauty of sense olm’s Leo D Southwest Minnesota State Marshall University, angel | Poet and professor of English(retired) Poet andprofessor of H is writing, both prose and poetry, H olm as a writer and teachingwriterand a as olm H is knowledge of literatureof knowledge is H America, China, e should be named poet named be should e I celand, have I I first know I’ve caught onto him. because negativity of man the accuse to directed at the waste of potential. But anger the positive, basically is view Bill’s contain. and they warmth affection the on up choked getting without pages few a than offer. to have beings human and art, life, what of love profound a first find also you —and poetry or at phrase the so prosework —whether his readdelightedapproval. myreceivedBut “arguments”), (read: discussions lively Bill-as- prompting “bump,” of preprandial shared lots a many withduring fulminator me provided indeed have years 30 world. past our The in wrong going sees he which that of criticism sharp unhesitatingly his to presumably reference a fulminator,” great and business co-conspirator. pay. awarddoesthis it,commodity. proves thatofpoetry think to Come day our ship will come in and poetry will become one a valued that hope out holds still he short, fallen far so have industry songs with honest poems andaffectionate humor. counterpointa playedbeingchordstwotheto punctuating and the Wincie Jóhannsdóttir Teacher English |Hamrahlid Iceland College,Reykjavík, of I Publisher, EssayAudio.com |NewBrighton Scott Beyers A I feel fortunate to call this fellow western Minnesotan my friend tog or fot t bcm cpan o te audiobook the of captains become to efforts our lthough a eiw of review a n il a dbe “the dubbed was Bill Brimnes of Windows The for one can never get through more through get never can one for I I will continue, over whiskey, can’t of course let him let course of can’t I American Of all the pianists I have heard in 46 years, no one can will to begin every day with a half-hour of Bach. It couldn’t hurt us in music into being as persuasively as Bill Holm. His outsized frame either our private or public lives.” and those wonderfully rough, large hands are able to produce Personally, I am very grateful to Bill for a thousand pleasures, plangent melodies and thunderous sonorities whenever he has a but none more profound than the love of piano duet playing, usually new obsession in mind—the late music of Schumann, the ecstatic with at least one adult beverage under our commodious belts. I musings of Rautavaara, the cool surfaces of Fauré, anything of Big have whiled away countless hours in this pastime, one that paints Daddy Bach . . . indeed, his musical obsessions (and they are nothing the rather alarming picture of two overly large men on one piano short of this) fill his life; he is “lost” when he has discovered a new bench in uncomfortable proximity to each other. Our piano team, composer, spending hours poring over scores from his capacious “Big Guys with Grand Pianos,” enjoys a modest success in western music library, or gotten through his shadowy network of music- Minnesota, where we are a hit on the hot-dish circuit, as well as the nerd informers. And he rarely contents himself only with the piano occasional “real” concert series. music; operas, symphonies, chamber music, songs—all are played But it is in Schubert’s duet music, and especially his Grand in hurried transcriptions or simply sight-read from full score. This Duo, that Bill’s true generosity has been exposed, allowing me into is the mark of a true musician—someone whose curiosity and thirst a world of which I had only half-consciously been aware and one for knowledge are not bound by his technique on one instrument. that I should have visited much earlier. It was on a still, crushingly Bill, never one to hide his agenda, is still moved by the old cold November night that I think I had my most profound musical Romantic notion that if people would just play music instead of experience, in a house in Minneota, the home of a prairie bard and buying contraptions to play it for them, we would come to our senses, the possessor of a spirit larger than his frame could contain. And stop killing the Earth, start listening to each other, and discharge for this I am ever grateful to Bill Holm. the motley crew that currently and arrogantly assures us of “God’s Dr. Daniel Rieppel will.” His ethos, both artistic and political, can be summed up in Professor of Music | Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall a line from one of his essays, “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bach,” where he discusses the salubrious effects of Bach’s music on the thinking capabilities of some of the more interesting specimens of the human race, including Halldór Laxness, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Casals: “Maybe Americans should make it our national habit

— BH 45 46 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist The Ghost of Wang Wei Looks atSkagafjörd of theAtlantic Ocean andthewholesky. in whichyou can just make outthereflection his moustache, hisslightly bloodshot eye his tiny blackboots, hisbrown coat, hisbluehat, Still you can see thefarmer, even from thisdistance, that disappears for thelength of afinger. off acliff, asilver knitting needle over hishead ariver falls halfamile to hispostage-stamp hay fieldwhile the size of amatchstick walks outof histhimblebarn black mountain lowering behindit. Onefarmer with its polka-dot sheepandthatten-mile-long one oldramshackle farm, looking smallandfar away one yellow wildflower, onebrown bird, onewhite horse, Everything appears oneatatime, atgreat distance: How theoldChinese poets would have admired Iceland!

—from Playing the Black Piano Black the Playing , 2004 og allan himininn. þúsérðA þar sem yfirvaraskeggið ogörlítið blóðhlaupin augun, svört hans, stígvélin brúna frakkann hans, bláa hattinn hans, Enn sérðubóndann, jafnvel héðanúrþessari fjárlægð, silfurprjónn hverfur sem inn ífingurinn. fellur fram af klöppinni yfirhöfði hans, að frímerkjareit akursins ámeðanáin á stærð við eldspýtu gengur útúrfingurbjörg hlöðunnar minnkarsem ábakviðhana. Bóndi flekkótt kindoghátt svartfjallið burtu, einn gamall bæraðhruni kominn, virðist sem lítilloglangt í eitt gult villiblóm, einnbrúnnfugl, einnhvítur hestur, A Mikið hefðu gömlu skáldin fráKína dáðst aðÍslandi! Translated fromtheEnglishbyEinarMárGudmundsson Andi Wang Weis horfiráSkagafjörðinn llt birtist eitt íeinu, íórafjarska: tlantshafið speglast Selected bibliography/discography

Books The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland. There Is No Other Way to Speak—Voices. Boxelder Bug Variations: A Meditation on an Idea in Language Milkweed Editions, 2007. EssayAudio.com, 2005. and Music. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1985. Chapbooks and letterpress As editor or introduction contributor Cabins of Minnesota (with Doug Ohman), Brahms’ Capriccio in C Major, Opus 76, No. 8. The Boys’ House, Jim Heynen (introduction). “Minnesota Byways” series. Marshall, Minnesota: Oxhead Press, 1990. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001. St. Paul: Borealis Books, 2007. Chocolate Chip Cookies for Your Enemies. Farming Words: The Harvest of Literature at a Prairie Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays. Tucson, Arizona: Josephson Publications, 1993. College (editor, with David Pichaske). Marshall, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 1990. Southwest Minnesota State University, 2007. Minnesota Lutheran Handbook. The Dead Get By with Everything (poems). Minneota, Minnesota: Westerheim Press, 1982. Happy Birthday, Minneota! (editor, with Tom Guttormsson Milkweed Editions, 1991. and John Rezmerski). Westerheim Press, 1981. More Shelf Space. Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary. Red Wing, Minnesota: Red Dragonfly Press, 2007. Memories of a Native Son, Eugene J. McCarthy (introduction). Milkweed Editions, 2000. Petersham, Massachusetts: The Lone Oak Press, 2001. Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death. Faces of Christmas Past. Minneapolis: Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1997. The People of Minnesota (series introduction). Afton, Minnesota: Afton Historical Society Press, 1998. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002. Warm Spell. The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth. Westerheim Press, 1980. The Quiet Hours, Mike Melman (introduction). Milkweed Editions, 1996. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. The Weavers. Landscape of Ghosts (with Bob Firth). Oxhead Press, 1985. There Is No Other Way to Speak (editor). Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1993. Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 2005. Audiobooks and CDs The Music of Failure. Faces of Christmas Past. Magazine essays Marshall, Minnesota: Plains Press, 1985. New Brighton, Minnesota: EssayAudio.com, 2002. Minnesota Orchestra Showcase: “The Violin in Greater Minnesota,” Vol. XXXVII, Playing the Black Piano (poems). Holmward Bound: An Evening with Bill Holm. No. 6 (February 2005). Milkweed Editions, 2004. EssayAudio.com, 2001. “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bach,” Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 (November 2006). (reprint of ). “A Low and Soulful Sound,” Vol. XL, No. 3 (November 2007). Prairie Days The Music of Failure Notes from the Black Piano. H Dallas, Texas: Saybrook Publishing Co., 1987. EssayAudio.com, 2004. — B 47 48 — writing at H Teaches Americanliterature andcreative 1970 -1976 Minnesota. Community College, White BearLake, Writer inresidence at Lakewood 1976 -1978 Virginia. Jona H 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist A Writer’s Life ampton I olm dies,1975. nstitute, H : ampton, first-generation I Jonina “Jona” Sigurborg Josephson, Minnesota, to William H Born onA 1943 ugust 25inMinneota, celandic Americans. olm, Sr., and Bill H and leaves Lawrence (A in1969 in Lawrence. Receives M.A studies at the U Adolphus with aB.A A 1965 –1969 churches, andnursing homes. writers—giving readings inlibraries, Rezmerski, Phebe H O Tours rural Minnesota with the Poetry 1977 -1978 fter graduating from G ut Loud troupe—including John olm, Sr., diesinMinneota, 1966. niversity of Kansas . inEnglish, anson, and otheranson, ustavus . in1967 .B.D .); G Minneota H D A 1949 –1965 ttends Yellow Medicine County istrict 90 ruralistrict 90 school(1949–1954), ustavus Adolphus College (1961–1965). igh and School (1955–1961), 1979 - 1980 1980 - 2007

Receives Fulbright grant to lecture in Teaches English at Southwest American literature at the University Minnesota State University in Marshall. of Iceland in Reykjavík. Publishes the chapbook Warm Spell (Westerheim Press).

1982 1985 1986 - 1987

Receives Bush Artist Fellowship. Publishes The Music of Failure (Plains As part of a faculty exchange program, Press), The Weavers (Oxhead Press), teaches English at Xi’an Jiaotong and Boxelder Bug Variations (Milkweed University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Editions). Republic of China. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1987.

1988 1990 1991 1992

Theatrical adaptation of Boxelder Milkweed Editions publishes Coming Coming Home Crazy wins a Minnesota Awarded a second Bush Artist Bug Variations produced by the Lyric Home Crazy, Holm’s account of his year Book Award; The Dead Get By with Fellowship; teaches literature at Wuhan Theatre in Minneapolis; assembled, in China. Also published this year: Everything published by Milkweed Technical University, Wuhan, China. written, and directed by Sally Childs. Brahms’ Capriccio in C Major, Opus 76, Editions. No. 8 (Oxhead Press).

— BH 49 : A Writer’s Life 50 — Cookies for Your Enemies. Josephson Press publishes Chocolate Chip Ghosts (Voyageuron Landscapeof Press); Collaborates with photographer Bob Firth 1993 St. Paul. both at the university inMarshall andin of Southwest Minnesota State U and solo recitals with D edition, Isole,in2002.Plays pianoduet Editions), which ispublished inanI Publishes EccentricIslands(Milkweed 2000 -2007 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist r. D aniel Rieppel niversity talian Americans andCanadians. weeks of summer writing workshops for whole summer eachyear. O I Purchases the cottage Brimnes inH 1999 celand, living andbegins there for the ©Bob FirthPhotography rganizes two ofsós, Can BeFilledAnywhereonEarth. Milkweed Editions publishes The Heart 1996 Holmward Bound(EssayA First spoken-word CDreleased: 2001 udio). by G A 2002 published byA Winter Faces Book. Christmas Past of the Minnesota Center for BookArts Death, Playing Haydnfor theAngelof Filled AnywhereonEarth.Writes Book A around the island; winsMinnesota to lecture onAmericanculture all I 1997 –1998 nvited to Madagascar byU warded doctorate anhonorary ustavus Adolphus College. ward for TheHeartCanBe fton Press. .S.I 2003 2004 2005

Presented with the Cobb Award for Invited to be the only American reader at the Nordic International Literary Festival Edits and writes introduction for the Service to Iceland by the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavík. Boxelder Bug Variations II presented at Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview, Minnesota Center for Book Arts Winter in Reykjavík. Minnesota. Playing the Black Piano published (Milkweed Editions). Book, There Is No Other Way to Speak.

2007

Publishes Cabins of Minnesota (Borealis Books) and The Windows of Brimnes (Milkweed Editions). Collaborates with David Pichaske to edit Farming Words (Southwest Minnesota Foundation). Plays a recital of left-hand transcriptions of Bach violin partitas at Gljúfrasteinn, the Icelandic home of Halldór Laxness, 1955 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

2008

Lives in Minneota with wife, Marcy Brekken.

— BH 51 : A Writer’s Life 52 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist

essays andpoetry. his for inspiration unending an been also has it home, lifelong course, but he makes a good point: Minnesota has not only been his nevee Bill interviewed Minnesotan” place. vibrant culturally more a state our making thereby Minnesota, like McKnightFoundation made have they all, wonderful, thought-provoking of art. Best patrons. and audiences attracted artists, founded younger have inspired organizations, They arts difference. strengthened and a made have they stay— staying, to by chose artists these elsewhere, work their pursue n inst, o al f hm ae en as been have them of all not Minnesota, in working lives their of most spent have winners past while that Vickie Arts Benson, Program Director About theAward The W H olm, have chosen to make their lives and careers in in careers and lives their make to chosen have olm, A e a eotr o te Marshall the for reporter a hen tog te hd h tln ad h opruiy to opportunity the and talent the had they lthough D istinguished as he is. he as H l fr n ril aot i wnig the winning his about article an for olm D istinguished A H rtist e said it with a twinkle in his eye, of eye, his in twinkle a with it said e A ad eonzs rit who, artists recognizes ward A , rtist The McKnight Foundation A ward, H I olm toldher olm ndependent “damned and

I truly meaningful tribute to a Minnesota’s most influential artists. award this make consideration thoughtful and standards high Singers;and f h Minnesota the of rtc t the at critic arts; performing of curator senior o longtime familiarity with the Minnesota arts community. have who people five of up made is recipient the selects that panel The year. same theconsidered are 31 March by receivedthose and inst ats ec year. each artist Minnesota

siue of nstitute h aad wih nlds $000 tpn, os o one to goes stipend, $50,000 a includes which award, The ur thanks go to panelists Philip Bither, WalkerBither, Philip panelists to go thanks ur EmilieBuchwald, founder of Milkweed Seat unus, omr coordinator former Turnquist, Stewart Tribune; Star Arts; Artists D l Wrad fudr f the of founder Warland, ale E hbto Porm t h Minneapolis the at Program xhibition N mntos r oe t everyone, to open are ominations raydon Royce, theater and arts and GraydonRoyce,theater Editions.Their D l Warland ale rt Center’s Art

1998 Dominick Argento 1999 Warren MacKenzie 2000 Robert Bly 2001 Dale Warland 2002 Emilie Buchwald 2003 Mike Lynch 2004 Stanislaw Skrowaczewski 2005 Judy Onofrio 2006 Lou Bellamy 2007 Kinji Akagawa

— BH 53 54 — 54 — 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist Robert J. Struyk Ted Staryk Noa Staryk John Natoli Richard D. McFarland Meghan Binger Brown Cynthia Binger Boynton Patricia S.Binger BingerErika L. B. Binger Anne Binger Board of Directors The McKnight Foundation

Erika L. BingerErika L. Officers The McKnight Foundation Compliance, andSecretary Vice President of Finance and Rick Scott Assistant Secretary Patricia S.Binger Assistant Treasurer Richard D. McFarland Treasurer Ted Staryk President Kate Wolford Board Chair All rights reserved. The McKnight© 2008 Foundation. paper containing 30%postconsumer waste. was printed with inksonrecycled soy-based Printer Environmental Initiative. This book printers who participate inthe PIM Great friendly inks.Additionally, we partnerwith and, wherever possible, environmentally using paper with postcosumer waste content philosophy that underlies ourpractice of to the protection of ourenvironment, a The McKnight Foundation iscommitted and communities, andthe environment. to support children andfamilies, ourregion Minnesota, the Foundation also makes grants the quality of and access to the arts. In which about 11% was directed to improve granted about $93 million in 2007, of assets of approximately $2.3 billionand the Minnesota-based Foundation had McKnightL. and Maude McKnight, L. and independently endowed by William strategic policy reform. Founded in1953 coalition-building, andencouragement of future generations through grantmaking, improve the quality of life for present and The McKnight Foundation to seeks About The McKnight Foundation Printing Daily Printing, Inc. Photography Jonathan Chapman Photography Editing Colleen Frankhart Design andArtDirection Joanne Grobe |velvetpeel Credits 2008 Distinguished Artist Acknowledgments

“Advice” by Bill Holm in The Dead Excerpt from Eccentric Islands by Get By with Everything (Minneapolis: Bill Holm (Minneapolis: Milkweed Milkweed Editions, 1991). Copyright Editions, 2000). Copyright © 2000 © 1991 by Bill Holm. Reprinted with by Bill Holm. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. permission from Milkweed Editions (www.milkweed.org). “The Sea Eats What It Pleases” and “The Ghost of Wang Wei Looks at Excerpt from The Windows of Brimnes Skagafjörd” by Bill Holm in Playing the by Bill Holm (Minneapolis: Milkweed Black Piano (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Editions, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Bill Holm. Reprinted with permission Bill Holm. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. from Milkweed Editions. “Independent People” by Einar “Not Sleeping at Bill Holm’s House” Már Gudmundsson in Kannski er from Farewell to the Starlight in pósturinn svangur (Perhaps the Whiskey, copyright © 2004 by Mailman Is Hungry) (Reykjavík: Barton Sutter, BOA Editions, Ltd. Edda Publishing, 2001). Copyright (www.boaeditions.org). Reprinted with © 2001 by Einar Már Gudmundsson. permission from BOA Editions, Ltd. Translated from the Icelandic in 2008 by Wincie Jóhannsdóttir and “Music for an old pump organ,” by used with the permission of Einar Bill Holm in The Heart Can Be Filled Már Gudmundsson. Anywhere on Earth (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1996). Copyright © 1996 by Bill Holm. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.

P 612 333 4220 710 South Second Street, Suite 400 www.mcknight.org Minneapoli, MN 55401