MPR’s John Rabe talks with poet/writer Bill Holm about stoicism and exhaustion of Midwesterners during regional floods.
Holm is a writer and poet living in Minneota, Minnesota. He won a Minnesota book award for Personal Voices for "The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth," published by Milkweed. He also became the first recipient of the Flanagan Prize for Midwestern writers.
This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Transcript:
(00:00:00) It's all things considered. I'm John Ray be three weeks of flooding are taking their toll on people's energy in Western Minnesota. The people in the Red River Valley are seeing the Waters Crest for a second time and supplies of volunteers and flood fighting equipment or wearing thin to those of us in areas not affected by flooding. It's perhaps impossible to understand the calm determination with which people battle the river each day patching Dykes stowing belongings and looking out for Neighbors welfare Bill home as a writer and poet living in, Minnesota, Minnesota his area. Hasn't been hit by floods, but he got more than its fair share of blizzards this winter and he's been to some of the flooded areas home. Just won a Minnesota book award this past weekend for the heart can be filled anywhere on Earth. It contains the stories of his Icelandic relatives who settled in Southwestern Minnesota Generations ago, and it helps explain the origins of some of the stoicism. We've witnessed during the flooding mr. Home. Thanks for joining us
(00:00:53) pleasure to be here and not to be drowned out.
(00:00:56) Well, you did just get back from Fargo. What impressed you up there?
(00:01:02) What impressed me I think was how people they had this glazed look on their face. Sometimes we mistake stoicism for having had more than enough. They've been fighting the river for so long. It's a kind of monster that keeps that keeps coming at them, you know, if there would be rumors that the crest was had been reached and was falling and his if that were some sort of cruel joke the next morning the river would rise again and back to The sandbags and now the sad pegs are soaked at are leaking. I talked to one fellow the owner of Zen Bros books where I gave a reading he came to the store for the first time in several days. He hadn't slept over an hour and a half consecutively because he had been Manning his sump pumps and sandbagging but it was a kind of stunt look as if they couldn't believe what nature was doing to them. So Restless in chilling anchor they simply looked like people who had been beaten excessively
(00:02:02) well, so there, you know if they're stunned and not stoic. They're also not falling apart
(00:02:09) though. Oh no minnesotans in North dakotans. Never fall apart. They live here. If you make it past your teenage years you quickly discovered that nature is not your friend. So you simply do what's necessary. But it does get tiresome.
(00:02:28) Well, do you draw on on your ancestors at all?
(00:02:33) No, I don't think anybody's ancestors ever put up with winters. Like this. Most of them came from Scandinavia or Germany. And after this winter I Unearthed to wonderful statistic that North Dakota is the record on this planet for temperature variation in one year in 1936. The temperatures the high and lower separated by a hundred and eighty one degrees and even Siberia can't match that. So when you live in North Dakota and Minnesota, you sort of live at Ground Zero. Of what nature can do to you?
(00:03:09) Did you run into anybody who planned to move
(00:03:13) it occurred to a lot of people? I don't think anyone will these sort of stud looks and people saying we don't have to live here. We can go elsewhere but they'll stay
(00:03:24) it's not as interesting somewhere
(00:03:25) else. Well, the human the human landscape is what makes the Midwest the place that it is not the natural landscape. And of course if you move you leave your neighbors, And all those entertaining conversations passing the time Walt sandbagging or locked into a motel for three and a half days during a blizzard. There's all this out cheerless to you.