Musician. Curmudgeon. Trailblazer. Prairie populist. Teacher. World traveler. Cultural critic. Humanitarian. Scholar. Skeptic. Insightful humorist. Charismatic speaker. Firebrand. Seer. Bill Holm was never afraid to say what was on his mind, and the readers of his more than a dozen books are all the better for it.

Collecting the best and the latest poems from Bill Holm’s oeuvre, The Chain Letter of the Soul paints a portrait of a man of great heart, broad vision, and startling prescience. Fans will recognize many of their favorites, and new readers will be introduced to an enduring voice of American literature.

In 2008, Bill Holm provided the phrase for the title of this new and selected volume of poems: “For it is life we want. We want the world, the whole beautiful world, alive—and we alive in it. That is the actual god we long for and seek, yet we have already found it, if we open our senses, our whole bodies, thus our souls. That is why I have written and intend to continue until someone among you takes up the happy work of keeping the chain letter of the soul moving along into whatever future will come.” Ultimately, in recording the individual observations of later life in this context, Holm confounds mortality by honoring a sense of an organic system that extends beyond birth and death.