Bill Holm's "Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem opens a week of poetry about food. Happy eating reading.

Bill Holm was born in 1943 on a farm outside Minneota, Minnesota. He received a BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1965 and an MA from the University of Kansas in 1967. Holm was the author of several poetry collections, including Playing the Black Piano and The Dead Get By with Everything. His collection The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems was published posthumously in 2009. He also wrote several essay collections, including The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland. A professor emeritus at Southwest Minnesota State until his retirement in 2008, Holm was known for his connection to Minnesota. In an article for the Minn Post, Nick Hayes describes him as “the quintessential voice of our small towns and prairies.” He goes on to note that Holm “was also our lost Icelander in Minnesota.” The grandchild of Icelandic immigrants, Holm spent most of his summers at his cottage in Hofsos, Iceland, and his writing was influenced both by the heritage and landscape of both of his homes. In 2008, Holm received the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. He died on February 26, 2009, in South Dakota.

-bio via Milkweed Editions

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, November 25th, 2025.
0:09.8	It is exactly one month until Christmas. Thanksgiving is also this week, and so as we turn toward that coming festal season that seemed appropriate to spend the week
0:23.4	featuring poems about something that is very near the heart of all festivity.
0:30.2	Food.
0:31.0	We begin today with a poem from Bill Holm called Bread Soup, an old Icelandic recipe.
0:42.7	Holm, who was born in 1943 and died in 2009, was a long-time professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. He was also a fellow
0:49.3	of the National Endowment for the Arts and received many other accolades for his writing, both poetry
0:57.9	and nonfiction essays. He was also a musician and frequent guest on Prairie Home Companion.
1:04.1	In fact, that's where I first discovered him.
1:07.6	Though born in Minnesota, home was the grandson of Icelandic immigrants and divided his time between Minnesota and a family home in Iceland.
1:17.2	His devotion to Icelandic culture and his work on the country's behalf were so great that he was actually awarded the award for exemplary diplomatic service by the country in 2003.
1:29.8	This poem is a testimony to that care, as you'll no doubt gather for yourself in just a moment.
1:36.9	Here is bread soup, an old Icelandic recipe.
1:42.4	Start with the square heavy loaf, steamed a whole day in a hot spring, until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast, grow dense as a black hole of bread.
1:53.7	Let it age and dry a little, then soak the old loaf for a day in warm water, flavored with raisins and lemon slices. Boil it until it is thick as
2:03.4	molasses. Pour it in a flat white bowl. Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream to melt in its brown belly.
2:11.7	This soup is alive as any animal, and the yeast and cream and rye will sing inside you after eating for a long time.
2:23.0	This poem is like eating a good bowl of soup on a cold day. There's something so
2:29.0	patient and comforting about it in its simplicity.
2:35.4	Ostensibly, it is what it claims to be in the title,
2:38.4	a recipe, and the language is incredibly simple, incredibly plain.
2:42.4	There are just a few instances of figurative language at all,
	...

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