The Music of Failure

by Bill Holm

“The ground bass is failure; America is the key signature; Pauline Bardal is the lyrical tune that sings at the center; Minneota, Minnesota, is the staff on which the tunes are written.” So begins the masterful title piece from Bill Holm’s first book of essays, The Music of Failure. This collection introduced to many the singular vision and voice of literary giant Bill Holm, a writer who had traveled well and widely but came back to his hometown of Minneotaâ the town of his immigrant Icelandic ancestorsâ as, in his words, “for all practical purposes a failure.” What emerges from these pages, and from Holm’s cherished writings over the next two and a half decades, 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 Music of Failure is a lyrical and surprising compilation that finds Holm mining the stories and places that captivated him and continue to enthrall his many readers. This 25th anniversary edition includes poignant portraits of Holm and the history of The Music of Failure by Jim Heynen and David Pichaske, along with an essay Holm requested be added to this new edition, “Is Minnesota in America Yet?” With beautiful black-and-white photographs by Tom Guttormsson, The Music of Failure is Bill Holm at both his early and quintessential best, an inimitable and much-missed writer who illuminates our private and common lives through both our quiet victories and our sublime failures.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Essays

101 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Bill Holm was an American poet, essayist, memoirist, and musician.

Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota, the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas.

Holm won a Fulbright and went to Iceland for a year, which stretched into longer. He continued to visit Iceland so regularly that his friends there helped him find a house in Hofsós. His last book, The Windows of Brimnes, is about his time in Iceland.

He was Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007. Though Minneota was his home, Holm had traveled the world, teaching English in China, spending summers in Iceland and late winters in Arizona, and visiting Europe and Madagascar.

Holm was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and some of his poems were included in Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

Holm was a McKnight Distinguished Artist in 2008, an award that honors Minnesota artists for their life work.

Reviews

[Maryjo · Rating 4 out of 5]

As relevant today as when first written. I highly recommed its music.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

--It's interesting to consider people who look at the world in prairie-think and forest-think.--

--I love Holm's celebration of failure. Not as a learning process, though this is crucial too, but also as something to love in and of itself.--



Continue for a while thinking of the Minnesota prairies as a natural cathedral with night services. By day money changers occupy the temple, and to them, there is no sacred place. The world is only real estate, and can be filed at the court house. The divine is entirely abstract, a series of slogans said but not believed in. Therefore, since the divine has no body, it needs no place to live, need be fed nothing. In the cathedrals of England, for instance, God is fed the dead. Their bones line the walls, are everywhere underfoot. Because of mistakes in human history, these corpses are only important people: generals, nobility, and an occasional safe artist. Never mind: it is a sound idea to hallow a place by putting bones inside it. Some, like Thomas Beckett, even die inside cathedrals staining the stones with blood, and that is better yet. (5)

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging collection of essays focused on seeing the sacred in the ordinary through the stories of the Scandinavian immigrants and the generations that followed on Minnesota's Western prairies.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It always seems a new tragedy when reading a book of Bill Holm's that I haven't read before – no more will be forthcoming from this author who died too young. What an accomplished man: traveler, musician, author, philosopher. He was one of the giants of the earth in Minnesota, both seeped in his ancestor's history, the current state of their descendants, and in touch with the wider world. Minneota, Minnesota pulled him home, a touchstone for all the various facets of his person. He also touched the other end of his genetic pipeline with his home in Iceland, near his ancestral home. But his writing from Brimnes, Iceland, touched on the same thoughts, not some smarmy ancestral volume. He had, however, touched the source of his heritage, and that showed.

Read The Music of Failure, and relish the words of a humble man filled with self knowledge and wisdom.

[Lisa Kentgen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't know how his name came to my attention but am I grateful it did.
Excellent essays, evocative of place and his great spirit.
Look forward to reading 'The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth'

[Candace Simar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really touched me. I wish I could give it more stars.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book -- beautiful prose, and some ideas that made me stop and smile, or think a little longer. It's a book of essays, some less than a page, some quite long. He's a Minnesota writer of Icelandic descent, and both places figure largely in his prose, but especially Minnesota. He's really a nature writer, rooted in a place.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title essay in this collection is a masterpiece, a bridge over the shallows one wades in daily. Holm was a poet. His writing is masterful without being pretentious or purely ornamental. It cuts deep and finds meaning in homely places. Essential reading for anyone who forgoes the ballyhooed American notion of success and returns to the simple life, anchored in love.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How had I not read this book before???

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pick this up. Give it to friends. Read it.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill Holm reflects on his Scandinavian ancestors and small town Minnesota life. His longest essay, "The Music of Failure" is positively brilliant.

[Karlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays that keeps resonating long after the cover falls shut. I finished "The Music of Failure," and immediately reread the essay. Gorgeous and moving.

[Dan Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a lot of this on NYC subways. I felt a strong pull back to the plains of southwest Minnesota. Even the vivid descriptions of winter in Minneota gave my soul a tug.

[Lee Staman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it. Read it now. This collection of essays/poems is outstanding. It made me appreciate the midwest in a way I didn't know was possible.

[Elias Carlston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over twenty years later, and I still think of this book often. Gonna read it again.

[Milton Brasher-Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first learned of Bill Holm when I was working on my book on home; bell hooks mentioned him in her book on belonging. This volume is a collection of essays and short pieces set, mostly, in and around Minneota, Minnesota. Though the theme of the value of failure runs through the book, the essays are not necessarily connected. Some of them don't have much of a point. They are all, however, full of affection for Minnesota, for life, and for the value of failure.