The Chain Letter of the Soul

Throughout his life and in his writing, Bill Holm was a humanist whose obsessions included mortality and eternity. He paid special attention to the notion of cycles, patterns, movements, and processes, and many of his most moving poems are dedicated to the friends and family he helped through the last stages of their lives. Collecting the best and most recent poems from Holm's oeuvre, The Chain Letter of the Soul paints a portrait of a man of great heart, broad vision, and startling prescience. Here, fans remember many of their favorites, and new readers discover an enduring voice of American literature through such poems as "Kafka Only Imagined It," "The Dead Get By with Everything," "My Old Friend AT&T Writes Me a Personal Letter," and "Lemon Pie." In these poems, the personal, vulnerable side of a great public figure is revealed.

Musician. Curmudgeon. Trailblazer. Prairie populist. Teacher. World traveler. Cultural critic. Humanitarian. Scholar. Skeptic. Insightful humorist. Charismatic speaker. Firebrand. Seer. Bill Holm was never afraid to say what was on his mind, and the readers of his more than a dozen books are all the better for it.

Collecting the best and the latest poems from Bill Holm’s oeuvre, The Chain Letter of the Soul paints a portrait of a man of great heart, broad vision, and startling prescience. Fans will recognize many of their favorites, and new readers will be introduced to an enduring voice of American literature.

In 2008, Bill Holm provided the phrase for the title of this new and selected volume of poems: “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.” Ultimately, in recording the individual observations of later life in this context, Holm confounds mortality by honoring a sense of an organic system that extends beyond birth and death.

Get The Chain Letter of the Soul by at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by Milkweed Editions and it has pages.