The Icelandic connection - 01.09.2010, Blaðsíða 41

Vol. 63 #2
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
91
The Chain Letter of the Soul
New and Selected Poems
By Bill Holm
Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, Minnesota
ISBN 978-57131 -444-4
i'ul hope and belief. To read new names
from exotic “not home” towns, that pre-
ceded your own familiar name was proof
that a larger world awaited, and that you
could dream of being part of it. It is fitting
that this bit of cultural arcana was resur-
rected in the title of Bill Holm’s posthu-
mous book, The Chain Letter of the Soul:
New and Selected Poems.
Bill’s prologue to the book adopts the
chain letter as a metaphor for his writing
life in words that blend Blakean mysti-
cism and good old American
Transcendental i s m:
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.
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.
Reviewed by Mhari Mackintosh
Title: A Life in E Major
The chain letter dates us. Popular in
the fifties, it was a semi-magical form let-
ter that nevertheless validated our youth-
ful selves in a context of friends and
strangers. It guaranteed our continued
existence into some unknowable future.
In its time, the chain letter was a serious
undertaking for young people who lived
in small hamlets like Gimli or Minneota.
It was like throwing a bottle with a mes-
sage into the lake. It was evidence of joy-
This prologue and the title are
prophetic and timely. In an age of intimi-
dating technology Bill held to the ancient
virtues of the handwritten word. He saw
that the mindless swooshing of forwards,
blogs and tweets to hapless friends and
strangers in a virtual world threatens to
make us mere operators of language
machines, producing our words out of
what he called in his poem “Ars Poetica,”
“something with a plug?” (8) It is good of
Bill to remind us that such writing is not
a “chain letter of the soul” but a passive
soulless endeavour, another step in what
he calls, “The Miniaturization of the