Playing the Black Piano

By Bill Holm

Book Overview

"The finest poems Holm has ever written." --MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

In this collection of poems, Bill Holm--like a modern-day Walt Whitman bestriding America and the world--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 Tuscon, from the endless marketing of long-distance telephone service to the experience of undergoing an MRI, these poems speak of Holm's full embrace of the world and his passion for living well.

This is a wise, musical collection from one of Minnesota's most treasured poets.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571314172
• ISBN13: 9781571314178
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Getting By

I bought this book and Holm's "The Dead Get By With Everything," and when I read aloud his "The Icelandic Language" to a certain committee, they immediately chorused, "Book him." Now Bill's surely "Getting By," for sadly, his last public appearance was at CLU's 2009 Nordic Spirit Symposium. Scandinavian-Americans, especially Midwesterners who see Iceland as some kind of proto-Scandinavia will enjoy Bill Holm. Erstwhile piano players will start looking up old sheet music - Haydn, Bach and such - after these opening lines: "The piano tells things to your hands/You never let yourself hear from others." You might find yourselves at a keyboard seeking your own epiphanies.

Music, Death, Love, and Lemon Merengue Pie

At the end of the day, it's what the poetry does to you, not the bases it touches to please the critics and academics. Read this book. These are poems to mull, consider, weigh. They come from a mind and a heart and soul as deep as you'll likely ever encounter. Think only of the ones who mean the most to you, that is how Holm poetically dwells in this collection. The stories cover the disconnect in American (i.e. US) life fostered by the mistaken notion that we own something/anything, especially the corporate monster. He reflects on how transient the time is we have with those who impact us most and how lasting their memory is. A friend dies of Aids. Death sits in a straight back chair waiting for him as he rediscovers Haydn. Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert walk across the background of the mirror in which he surveys what has happened in his life. An MRI and the simple minded attendant provoke replies of a life well considered, and supremely annoyed by the ephemeral. Never knew anything about Holm until I was given this by Thuy. I have read and re-read these poems and expect to do so with whatever time I have left. Holm advises you to play your music now. As his friend admonishes, "Eat dessert first. Life is short and uncertain."