Playing the Black Piano
by Bill Holm
In this new collection, noted essayist Bill Holm (Coming Home Crazy, Eccentric Islands, The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth)
returns to his true love---poetry. Like a modern-day Walt Whitman
bestriding America and the world, Holm comments on the waywardness and
promise of the human species. Playing the Black Piano reflects
Holm's time in Iceland (his ancestral home), his ongoing love affair
with music, a friend's death from AIDS, and his bold reactions to the
world around him. Moving from Oregon forests to the deserts around
Tucson, from the endless marketing of long-distance telephone service
to the experience of undergoing an MRI, the poems speak of this man's
full embrace of the world and his passion for living well.
Bill Holm
Author's Bio:Bill
Holm was born to Icelandic immigrants on a farm north of Minneota,
Minnesota in 1943. A long-time resident of Minneota, Holm lived with
his wife Marcie and taught at Southwest Minnesota State University in
Marshall from 1980 until he retired in 2007. He traveled widely, to
Iceland on a Fulbright in 1979, and more recently to his summer home in
Hofsos; and to China, where he taught on an academic exchange program
in 1986 and again in 1992. The recipient of the 2008 McKnight
Distinguished Artist Award, Holm is the author of several books of
essays and poetry including, most recently, The Windows of Brimnes. Known both regionally and nationally as a humorist, writer, and prairie radical, Bill Holm passed away on February 26, 2009.
Quotes:“It isn't the kind of book you simply read cover to cover and then
place it back on the shelf. It's the kind of book you keep next to the
night stand or next to your favorite recliner. Holm's newest book will
touch your heart and spirit.”—Timothy Douglass, Advocate Tribune.
"Bill
Holm is not only one of the finest poets in North America, but (let me
not mince words) he is now expressing his view of the world in the
finest poems he has ever written. Holm's ears are tuned right, and his
poems about music are particularly accomplished . . . . Here is the heat and
fire of music, by God, in words—words that are kneaded through Holm's
rough fingers . . . . In these poems, Holm is playing the black piano for the
rest of us with a power and an eloquence that is breathtaking.”—Eric
Friesen, Star Tribune.
“It appears Bill Holm is keeping the angel of death away.”—Linda Piwowarczyk, Suburban Chicago Newspapers
“Holm
celebrates the free market of music, from Schubert, Gould and Tatum to
musical beggars on Wuhan's Luoshi Road in China.”—Minnesota Monthly
“Holm
is a musician as well as a poet. He fills his work with wonderful
music, and with snapshots of his travels . . . . We flip past Iceland to
China, the Dakotas, Greece, Alaska, Madagascar and Manhattan . . . by the
time we reach the book's title poem, Death comes in a flurry, as Holm
plays preludes and fugues, such as Mozart, Brahms and Beehtoven”—Philadelphia Inquirer
"The poems in Playing the Black Piano
grew out of this big, blond man's year of teaching in China, his scorn
for much of corporate America, his love of music and his fondness for
Iceland . . . Holm calls music 'a metaphor for my inner life'"—Duluth News
Tribune
"Holm takes adult readers to Iceland where 'in the middle
of the night,/it is day, whatever my clock may say' and deeper into the
cyclical and astonishing nature of our lives.”—Suburban Chicago
Newspapers (online)
“In this collection, there are poems about
the questionable life in America, and the hard and sweet life in China.
Holm gives an elated bow to the great European composers, and to the
beauty of music in general. This is Bill Holm's most compassionate
work.”—Dan Wahl, The Corresponder |
Price:
$ 14.95
Binding: Paper
Availability In Stock: 253
immediately
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2004
Size: 6 x 9
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 152
ISBN: 9781571314178
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