The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2009, Page 54

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #3
quality consistent with his limited space. He
played every day. His published work was
heavily autobiographical, and anyone who
reads his poems or essays ends up knowing
a lot about Bill Holm. In 1996 Milkweed
published The Heart Can Be Filled
Anywhere on Earth: Minneota, Minnesota,
essays about his close connection to the
prairie farm community of his childhood,
and where he lived in his later years. In 2000
came Eccentric Islands—Travels Real and
Imaginary, in which he starts with his name,
Holm, which means island, and writes chap-
ters relating to several islands, including
himself, with two chapters on Iceland, com-
paring his impressions and experiences in
1979 with those in 1999, when the country
had changed a great deal. Other books
include Coming Home Crazy, published in
1990, based on his experience teaching
English in a Chinese university in the 1980s,
and Boxelder Bug Variations, a one-of-a-
kind "Meditation on an Idea in Language
and Music," fun and a little nutty.
His poetry is often funny, always grace-
ful and meaningful. I expect there will be at
least one posthumous book. His literary
heroes were Whitman and Mark Twain,
especially Whitman.
I live in Seattle, Washington. While
composing this email my radio, in the back-
ground, dropped the name Bill Holm into
my consciousness. The announcement said
that this afternoon there will be a recorded
interview with Bill by Rick Steves, who
writes travel books and runs a travel agency,
about Eccentric Islands. Certainly an odd
coincidence. I will be sure to tune in.
There is a lot on the internet about him.
I suggest that you type “Bill Holm Iceland”
or “Bill Holm Minnesota” into your brows-
er to avoid results for other Bill Holms,
including a well-known Seattle man who is
an authority on Native American art. All his
books are readily available through internet
bookstores.
I admit to being a bit of a missionary for
his work. I have no doubt that you will find
further exposure to it rewarding.
::'Bill Holm, “The Icelandic Language”
in The Dead Get By With Everything
(Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1990).
Copyright © 1990 by Bill Holm.
Reprinted with permission from Milkweed
Editions
Compare the version in The
Xenophobe’s Guide:
In an airconditioned room you cannot
understand
the grammar of this language,
The whirring machine drowns out the
soft vowels,
But you can hear these vowels in the
mountain wind
And in heavy seas breaking over the
hull of a small
boat.
Old ladies can wind their long hair in
this language
And can hum, and knit, and make pan-
cakes.
But you cannot have a cocktail party
in this
language
And say witty things with a drink in
your hand.
You must sit down to speak this lan-
guage,
It is so heavy you can’t be polite or
chatter in it.
For once you have begun a sentence,
the whole
course of your life is set up before
y°u,
Every foolish mistake is clear, every
failure, every
grief,
Moving around the inflections from
case to case
and gender to gender,
The vowels changing and darkening,
the consonants
softening on the tongue
Till they are the sound of a gull’s
wings fluttering
As he flies out of the wake of a small
boat drifting
out to open water.
- Henry Bjornsson