The Music of Failure

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 Holms 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 Minneotathe town of his immigrant Icelandic ancestorsas, in his words, for all practical purposes a failure.

Foreword, Jim Heynen, The Grand Tour, Horizontal Grandeur, On Tour in Western Minnesota, The Poetry-Out-Loud Troupe Reads in Four Nursing Homes, An Icelandic Woman Visits Minneota, The Mountains in Lincoln County, What the Prairie Eye Looks for in a Mountain: Chief Mountain, MontanaIcelanders, Boxelders, Soybeans, and Poets, Bill Holm Sr., Fred Manfred in Roundwind: Luverne, Minnesota Ronald Catholics, The Old Round-Up Saloon, Sunday Morning Singing, Latin in New Ulm, The Music of Failure: Variations on an Idea, Cold Snap Spring Comes, A Little Talk for the School Teachers of Appleton, Minnesota, Lucky Stone At the Grave of William J. Holm: Bay View Cemetery, Bellingham, WashingtonIs Minnesota in America Yet?, Afterword: A Left Bank Can Be Found Anywhere on Earth, David Pichaske