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Boxelder Bug Variations: A Meditation on an Idea in Language and Music
Book by Holm, Bill
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 1985
1 person is currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Bill Holm
56 books31 followersBill 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 31, 2010
One of my friends at the aquarium bought this for a dollar at Half Price Books. Everything about nature seems to interest her, so why not? I don't know how we got to talking about box elder bugs. I haven't thought about them since I was a kid, collecting them off the side of my friend's house, giving them names (usually Moe), and drawing pictures of them. Although this book alludes to their "variations," I can assure you every drawing looked the same. When you like to draw, but can't do it very well, it's best to choose a simple specimen, one that won't get insulted when you get it wrong.
This collection of pictures, poems, and songs is an unexpected joy to read. With literary references that could redden any ivory tower, it doesn't leave a single stone unturned when discussing our tiny black and red pals.
Five stars, huh? Yeah, FIVE. This book is just one more surprise example of the shared human experience. No matter how many people call you weird for liking something, there are at least as many people somewhere in the world who like it too and evidence of such is marvelous!
This collection of pictures, poems, and songs is an unexpected joy to read. With literary references that could redden any ivory tower, it doesn't leave a single stone unturned when discussing our tiny black and red pals.
Five stars, huh? Yeah, FIVE. This book is just one more surprise example of the shared human experience. No matter how many people call you weird for liking something, there are at least as many people somewhere in the world who like it too and evidence of such is marvelous!
May 26, 2021
This little book, with its meditations and variations and musications on the wonderful and not-so-insignificant boxelder bug, is pure mad genius of the farmingist, plainsmanist, insectist kind.
January 7, 2024
I remember my dad talking about boxelder bugs when I was younger, and never really knew what he was talking about.
Then as an adult I moved to Morris MN. Boxelder bug population: approximately 1 billion, several of which find their ways into our house.
A curious, clever, utterly charming book.
favorite quotes:
Yet humans have tried to imagine how those last pages of Bach [in the Art of Fugue] might have sounded, and Busoni, in Fantasia Contrapunctistica, was audacious enough to try to finish it. His solution is interesting, and proves him a brave and intelligent man, though not Bach. Next to the size of Bach, we are, I suppose, all boxelder bugs of one variety or another. (53)
--
You have a soul, whether you want one or not, and when you open it to let it speak or hear, it becomes inexhaustible conversing with inexhaustible. (54)
--
Playing the Diabelli Variations, I discover that the sublime is sometimes apparent in the unpretentious, if you listen with the right ears (title to four-part poem on 59)
--
from three-part poem on 73, titled
Tom Guttormsson, who edits the
Minneota Mascot,
Practices his literary criticism on
Boxelder Bugs
III.
Two things in this world
you ought to accept peacefully:
dandelions and boxelder bugs.
--
The material of any work of art -- a chair, an afghan, an equestrian statue, a waltz -- is so amorphous and mysterious that probably only a psychologist, an executioner, or a full professor would be fool enough to try to name it, or even describe it in its own language. (88)
... there are always enough boxelder bugs in your line of vision to remind you that the planet is still safely turning in its own galaxy. (88).
Then as an adult I moved to Morris MN. Boxelder bug population: approximately 1 billion, several of which find their ways into our house.
A curious, clever, utterly charming book.
favorite quotes:
Yet humans have tried to imagine how those last pages of Bach [in the Art of Fugue] might have sounded, and Busoni, in Fantasia Contrapunctistica, was audacious enough to try to finish it. His solution is interesting, and proves him a brave and intelligent man, though not Bach. Next to the size of Bach, we are, I suppose, all boxelder bugs of one variety or another. (53)
--
You have a soul, whether you want one or not, and when you open it to let it speak or hear, it becomes inexhaustible conversing with inexhaustible. (54)
--
Playing the Diabelli Variations, I discover that the sublime is sometimes apparent in the unpretentious, if you listen with the right ears (title to four-part poem on 59)
--
from three-part poem on 73, titled
Tom Guttormsson, who edits the
Minneota Mascot,
Practices his literary criticism on
Boxelder Bugs
III.
Two things in this world
you ought to accept peacefully:
dandelions and boxelder bugs.
--
The material of any work of art -- a chair, an afghan, an equestrian statue, a waltz -- is so amorphous and mysterious that probably only a psychologist, an executioner, or a full professor would be fool enough to try to name it, or even describe it in its own language. (88)
... there are always enough boxelder bugs in your line of vision to remind you that the planet is still safely turning in its own galaxy. (88).
March 25, 2024
may indeed be in the running for “the world’s oddest literary project”, and I enjoyed every page. think I’d get along well with this author and his penchant for digging too far into oddball rabbitholes and drawing unlikely connections. bugs! music! words! sexy trifecta.
also learned about clavichords. now to scratch the itch that is hearing a ‘Bebung’ tremble in person…
also learned about clavichords. now to scratch the itch that is hearing a ‘Bebung’ tremble in person…
April 2, 2009
Bill Holm has a way of making the insignificant and even annoying interesting. The book encourages the reader to go further than passive reading -- to fully appreciate what is there, one needs to play/read music, speak out loud, and interact with the world. Somehow his writing bounces the reader more fully back into life.
May 23, 2023
This is my Gödel, Escher, Bach. Gödel, Escher, Bug, lol - a single-mindedly multidisciplinary book that I was unable to fully appreciate for the simple reason of not reading it sitting at a piano or clavichord, and when a book filed under poetry (a blind bookstore buy this afternoon) yet also containing critical essays makes demands like that of the reader, you know it's something truly special.
January 29, 2008
This is so strange - boxelder bugs and music. Boxelder bugs and poetry. Meditation and boxelder bugs. Unfortunately, while several segments shine on their own, Holm lets his smug, showy tone distract from the book's content.
March 22, 2014
Musical. A favorite line -
Those who save half of what they own feel one pleasure/those who spend everything they have feel another/And who is to say which is the greatest pleasure
Those who save half of what they own feel one pleasure/those who spend everything they have feel another/And who is to say which is the greatest pleasure
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews