“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 in whatever future will come.”
– Bill Holm, 1943-2009
“One of our country’s few essential contemporary writers.”
– Ted Kooser
“The sage of Minnesota, a colleague of Whitman born a hundred years too late.”
– Garrison Keillor
“His whole persona comes with a clear mandate: DO NOT DUPLICATE — as if anyone could if they tried.”
– Jim Heynen
Collecting the best and the newest 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 from Boxelder Bug Variations, The Dead Get By With Everything, and Playing the Black Piano, and new readers will be introduced to an enduring voice of American literature. “Bill Holm, one of MN’s greatest champions of the arts, passed away not too long ago. The Chain Letter of the Soul is his last book–a new and selected poems (heavy on the new) that is not at all one of those thrown together collections. It is a great testament to his life and his writing.”
– Hans Weyandt, Micawber’s Books, St, Paul, MN
Upon Bill Holm’s untimely death at age 65 in 2009 from massive pneumonia, Garrison Keillor called him “the sage of Minnesota, a colleague of Whitman though born a hundred years too late.” Known and loved for his outspoken essays and poems, his lively public talks and performances, his decades of service as a teacher—not to mention his keen and insightful wit, his enthusiastic love of art and music, and his fearless opinions—Bill Holm was an American original.
