Life Poem: Bob Holman

Bob Holman, 21 years old in 1971, and ready to take on life, takes on life by writing and submitting his (this) Life Poem for the “United States Award.” “Desperate now,” he says then, “I’ve started to write down everything that comes into my head.” And, in doing that it is set down here as well as having been submitted for recognition in 1971. Holman was (and continues to be) desperate not to let anything escape him.

In the almost fifty years that intervenes between its writing and its publication, Bob Holman’s life has been in pursuit of being the poet. Success may change a man, but success does not change the poet. The poet will always seek that nothing escape him. Holman succeeds and shows you here the underpinnings of that success.