I was scrunched in the back of the first balcony at the crowded Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Tuesday. The room, with all its intelligence and elegance, was upstaged for two hours by dragging the poet-giant Bill Holm through our hearts one more time. It was a pleasurable pain. I wept, then laughed, then wept again. His ability to stop time with his authentic voice, full of melancholy and melody, enriched everyone who found him on stage, in front of a piano, or in the pages of his books. A great poet, our Pavarotti.

Carl Franzen, Minneapolis