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SPEAKER 1: Bill Holm is a poet in Southwest Minnesota. He lives in Minneota, which is a small town near Marshall. He is perhaps best known as the author of Coming Home Crazy, which is a book of essays about an American living and teaching in China. And Bill is with us now by phone this morning. Bill, first, could you give us the weather report and latest conditions in Minneota?

BILL HOLM: Well, the wind is blowing. And there's a foot of snow on the ground. And I haven't been out of the house yet today.

SPEAKER 1: Would you describe it as scenic?

BILL HOLM: [LAUGHS] I've lived in Minnesota my whole life. So one hardly describes blizzards as scenic. They're conveniences.

SPEAKER 1: What about prairie blizzards? You live in a prairie area. Is there anything specifically poetic about a blizzard on the prairie?

BILL HOLM: Well, I'm not sure there's anything poetic about a blizzard itself. A blizzard is a kind of a good reminder to people in Minnesota that nature is tougher than they are. So they get to stay home and actually read poetry or anything else that they want to. A blizzard is a wonderful excuse to not function.

SPEAKER 1: It's a very humbling experience, unless you're in radio, for example. And then you have to try and go against mother nature. A lot of us did. Well, have you been reading some poetry?

BILL HOLM: You snowed in to the office yourself?

SPEAKER 1: No, I haven't been. I was one of the ones with less than a lot of common sense who decided to drive in to work.

BILL HOLM: Well, I was supposed to be in downtown Saint Paul this morning, myself.

SPEAKER 1: I'll say one thing. There is not a lot of traffic out there.

BILL HOLM: The only traffic that's gone by my house in Minneota is the snowplow, which woke me up this morning with its blue light moving the snow.

SPEAKER 1: Well, you haven't been out of the house. What about some of your neighbors?

BILL HOLM: My cousin Darren went downtown to the post office, but there was no mail. The grocery store is open, selling Velveeta and hamburger.

[LAUGHTER]

Still make hot dish even in the middle of a blizzard.

SPEAKER 1: Those are good provisions, aren't they? In a snowstorm, even Velveeta tastes pretty good.

BILL HOLM: And I've been sitting here reading an essay on the Congo River. And quite wonderful about reading tropical literature as the wind howls in the windows.

SPEAKER 1: Does it warm you up a bit?

BILL HOLM: Somehow, descriptions of baobab trees, and bougainvillea, and people sweating, and going into the black waters of the Congo River as the wind is rattling the west windows.

SPEAKER 1: Well, is this the type of situation-- and a lot of people are snowed in or just have the common sense not to go out-- that gets the creative juices flowing?

BILL HOLM: Well, I think there's a lot of good poems and short stories written in blizzards. Because you can't go out of the house. You can't get into your car. And life does not function normally. So somehow, for the creation of intelligent things in human beings, you have to somehow stop the functioning of normal social life. And blizzards do that so wonderfully.

SPEAKER 1: Were you prepared? Do you put away cans of tuna, and dry milk, and things like that, just in case?

BILL HOLM: Well, what I do is I lay in supplies of red wine.

[LAUGHTER]

When one is far from Minneapolis, one does that, blizzards.

SPEAKER 1: If you were or if you will write about this, what would you say about the last 48 hours or so?

BILL HOLM: Well, there's a kind of inverse pride. The phone keeps ringing with my old friends from other parts of the country. I got a call from a woman who worked for the Star Tribune, and her husband, who was from Sioux Center, Iowa, calling to say, is it really blizzarding? And I said, why, of course it is. And they said, oh, we wish we were there. I describe it to them. And I say, how is it in Seattle? They say, well, it's about 55 and drizzling.

And somehow, blizzards always seem quite wonderful. I had a call from a friend on the Oregon Coast who was watching the sunset. And it was about 65 and lovely. And the wind was just coming up over the sea. And it's quite easy to get dreamy about blizzards. So people actually envy us, these storms.

SPEAKER 1: Yeah, this blizzard has made national news. And in some cases, it's been the lead story. It's gotten us at least as much attention as the World Series, I suspect.

BILL HOLM: And of course, since weather is our chief metaphor in Minnesota for discussing our inner life, the more weather we have, the better the metaphors get.

SPEAKER 1: I guess anybody who goes through one of these is a Minnesotan, no matter where he or she was born.

BILL HOLM: Yeah, I did hear on the radio, a small interview with a fellow from Atlanta, who had gotten snowed in here, and seemed rather hopeless about the whole thing.

SPEAKER 1: Well, I'll tell you what, you sound much less than hopeless. You sound like you're in pretty good shape, with some of that red wine. So let me wish you a cheers and a bon appetit.

BILL HOLM: And a happy blizzard to all of you up in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

SPEAKER 1: Bill Holm is a poet in Southwest Minnesota. He lives in Minneota, which is a small town near Marshall. He is the author of, among other things, Coming Home Crazy.