Playing the Black Piano: Poems

by Bill Holm

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571314178
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	02/17/2004
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

I	A Bowl of Thought
	The Ghost of Wang Wei Looks at Skagafjord	5
	Bird Poetry on Skagafjord	6
	In the Sauoarkrokur Supermarket	7
	At the Icelandic Emigration Center in Hofsos	9
	Food Fight Duet. Sanichton, B.C.	10
	Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe	11
	Tjaldur at Tjornir	12
	Bach in Brimnes	14
	Summer Light in Brimnes	15
	Icelandic Recycling on a Summer Night	17
	Night Fishing in Skagafjord	18
	To Kristjan Arnason	19
II	Free Market Music
	Angels We Have Heard on High	23
	What Beethoven's Music Will Do to You	25
	Heavenly Length	26
	The Man Who Threw Nothing Away	27
	Playing Haydn for the Angel of Death	29
	Romance Oubliee. Franz Liszt. 1880	36
	The Weavers	39
	Kunstlerleben	40
	Girl Eating Rice--Wuhan 1992	42
	Musical Shopping in Wuchang--1992	43
	Capitalist Music on Luoshi Road--Wuhan 1992	44
	Art Tatum	45
	Glenn Gould 1932-1982	47
	J. S. Bach: F# Minor Toccata	49
	Practicing the Blumenfeld Etude for the Left Hand Alone	50
III	Free Market Wind
	My Old Friend AT&T Writes Me a Personal Letter	53
	American News	55
	Corporate Wind	56
	Hallelujah at the Sioux Falls Airport	57
	Without TV	58
	MRI	59
	Delos in the Rain	61
	Looking at God	65
	The Paranoia of Happy Skeptics Visiting the West Coast	67
	Official Talk in Wuhan--1992	69
	An Early Morning Cafe	71
	Paul Wellstone--October 25, 2002	74
	The Sea Eats What It Pleases	76
IV	The World Is Enough
	Water Tango in the Sea of Cortez	79
	Ecological Anorexia outside Tucson	80
	Silence in North Dakota	82
	Thistles	84
	Coelacanth	86
	A Visit with Fred Manfred's Ghost--Blue Mounds, 1997	88
	John Clare's Last Letter	90
	Wedding Poem	92
V	About This One Last Wish
	A Note on the Door	97
	The Sanity of Denial	98
	Living Will / Will to Live	101
	Playing the Black Piano	104
	1700 36th Avenue	106
	Lemon Pie	108
	Lightning	110
	Beethoven in Victoria	112
	Magnificat	115
	Scattering Ashes at Lake MacDonald	121
	Buying a Stone in Echo, Minnesota	125
	Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back	128