Bill Holm: One of a kind

The late Bill Holm was born on a farm just north of Minneota, Minn., in 1943, and that birthplace came to define his literary work, and his personality.

Holm traveled the world, including regular visits to Iceland, the land of his forefathers. But he always returned to Minneota, as he explained in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio.

“The further away from Minneota that I got, the more I realized that my material as a writer, not just material, but the way in which I saw the world, and the lens through which I observed America, the world and my life, somehow had something to do with this funny little town where I was born.”

The Midwest lost a treasured voice when Holm died in 2009 at the age of 65.

This month, a 25th Anniversary Edition of “The Music of Failure,” Holm’s influential first book of essays, is released by University of Minnesota Press. With a forward written by Jim Heynen, the hardcover 160-page book with 15 illustrations, is priced at $16.95, and $10.50 for paper.

Minnesota author Robert Bly had this to say about Holm’s first collection — his earliest and purportedly, his best work:

“Bill Holm’s essay “The Music of Failure” is worth the price of the whole book. Why will Americans agree to experience so many things, but not failure? The beauty of failure is his theme. A brilliant essay.”

But, says the publisher, what emerges from these pages is anything but failure. “From his ruminations on life in Minneota, family history, and the ‘horizontal grandeur’ of the Midwestern prairie to a poetry-reading tour of Minnesota nursing homes and an account of a naked man eating lilacs out of his garden,” the book is a lyrical and surprising compilation.

Award-winning Holm went on writing for the next two and a half decades, which resulted in the books “Boxelder Bug Variations,” “The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth,” and several others. Reviewers say Holm illuminated “our private and common lives through both our quiet victories and our sublime failures.”