Bill Holm's Blog

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1. billholm - August 23, 2009

One word at a time.

One poem at a time.

One a day.

For a year.

That’s what this is. My only solution.

Since I am purely deadline motivated, this is the only way I can develop myself as an artist and move beyond dabbling and self-recrimination. The illusion of others reading this daily and scolding me if I don’t post a poem might motivate me.

Of course, I hope you will comment now and then on what I write and scold me if slack creeps in.

Why poetry? All I can do, as a writer of creative prose, is use words as vehicles for expressing comic cynicism that thinly veils pain spawned by the impossibility of any ideal; the hollowed out core of everything. The preposterous chews our every second.

Somehow poetry is different. The real stuff comes from a different place where words simply aren’t strung together until a story is told. Words in poetry are structure, structure is meaning. Words in poetry, no matter how we think we have them wrestled to the ground and pinned, wriggle away to reveal more than was known. It’s always that way. Poetry expresses depths we never intended and cannot understand. But others might see it.

In a way, everyone’s life is a poem. Each bit of behavior, each utterance, is composed of elements of truth (the words) revealing a larger truth (a poem) to which we are oblivious, no matter what we think.

Which is to say that I’m intimidated. I cannot write a word without the amorphous weight of the task crushing my ambition.

So one word at a time. Like climbing the dune. I can always take one more step, one more step. I can only keep my head down and take one more step.

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2. lazfreedman - April 6, 2010

I really like your style,not to sound cornballish either!
One word at a time.

Peace to you man!

Laz

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3. youareuseless - June 21, 2010

Bill, I might join you in this endeavor. I too am terribly unmotivated sometimes, but life is so much better with poetry!

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4. Pamela Taylor - August 13, 2010

Are you the Bill Holm who wrote the China Essay book? I enjoyed it so much and wondered if you still visit the country often?
Pamela Taylor

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Bill Holm - August 13, 2010

No, Pamela, that’s the Bill Holm who was a great poet from Minnesota. He died more than a year ago.

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5. Tim Bellows - June 23, 2011

Hi! – – – Riffing off Bill’s “larger truth.” Thanks for reading.
-=-=-=-=-
A LETTER TO CHRIS. CALL IT
“LITERATURE, A BUNCH OF MADE UP STUFF”?

So, Chris, . . . why bother? Why spend your time with these fictions and poemlines strung along in words?
Here’s my thought on that for today: An author, in the work of delving and diving for an over-the-top insight, can bring out a story or poem that hits on some issue we may barely understand in ourselves. We may find, in reading, a range of feeling shown that we’ve never bathed in. We’re confronted, in black and white, with a new perspective, a new take on how life and love work. Now we can see more clearly – if we pay attention and lead with heart-sense as we read.
And by the way, will we choose to read “The Things They Carried” (to me, this is too heartless in places to be useful) or the heartfelt, dramatic “Fialta” by Rebecca Lee?
Perhaps you too have grown tired of of the many writers who fall back on imagery of darkness, night, and all things hopeless. And just leave us there.
Here’s a passage – from Lee – more in my style; it’s inspired from a higher “plane” than the earth; it gives a lift, framed in beauty:

As I walked home, I turned back and saw through the trees again that window, ringing with clarity and light above the dark grounds, the way the imagination shines above the dark world, as inaccessible as love, even as it casts its light all around. (from “Fialta.”)

Remember that all the choices and micro-choices we make determine the path our writings will take. What reading, music, writing, art and movement are we allowing to touch us? What’s the mood, the tone, the spiritual height of it all? I remember a line in Heller’s Catch 22: “The spirit gone, man is garbage.” This says that for real worth, we need to keep connected with spirit, to be spirit (I know that word can’t be defined or even logically defended)! The spirit present, man is priceless. As writers, we need to be aware of where we’re coming from to make a genuine contribution. How much do we make our daily life a caress to love, spirit, compassion, kindness?

What can we do about this issue? How do you, Chris, innovate to be a high spark – and set one off in readers?

Let’s keep in touch,

Tim Bellows, the poetryguy

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Bill Holm - June 23, 2011

I must tell you…I’m making a book composed of poems I wrote during the year when I wrote a poem every day (almost). It occurred to me that maybe I should include “The Idea” in an intro, so I read it on my blog again after many months–about exactly the same time you did. So your comment is more than timely. It’s eerily timed. Thanks for reading, and thanks for forwarding the letter your wrote to Chris. I think you’re right, and I also think writing poems helps you find the “larger truths” in yourself and deal more honestly and fulfillingly with reality.

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6. Tim Bellows - June 23, 2011

Thanks, Bill,

It’s a treat to be in touch with the author of “The Icelandic Language”! A master work of associative writing.

~ Tim Bellows ~

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Bill Holm - June 23, 2011

Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that Bill Holm. The Bill Holm you think I am is dead. He died about a year and a half ago. You’re in touch with me. But thanks for commenting anyway.

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