First British publication by major Irish-American poet.
Thomas Lynch is the author of three collections of essays, Bodies in Motion and at Rest, The Undertaking, which was shortlisted for the 1997 National Book Award, and Booking Passage. His poetry collections include Grimalkin & Other Poems and Still Life in Milford. He lives and works in Milford, Michigan, where he is the funeral director, and in West Clare where he keeps an ancestral cottage.
Thomas Lynch is at pains to seem the guileless author of poems
which simply end up in remarkable proximity to their subjects. In
fact he is an artist of great gifts, musically elevating and
directing the speaking voice towards a startling power, moving
through the accumulation of detail to give a visionary account of
ordinary life, doing justice to its error and comedy. If it remains
the poet's task to say thigns on behalf of everybody, Lynch shows
us how it shoud be done
*Sean O'Brien*
Thomas Lynch looks into the eyes of corpses and sees their lives
and their difficult loves that remind him of his own. And he
manages to do this with humour and grace
*Matthew Sweeney*
He can fashion long, singing lines unafraid of the old elemental
resonances of stars, roses, angels, the Latin mysteries of his
Catholic childhood
*Observer*
His stately ruminations... mediate between the poles of innocent
joy and ultimate disaster without tipping over in either
direction
*Guardian*
This thoughtful volume is neither too sentimental nor too clinical
about death's role (and the author's) in our lives
*Kirkus Reviews*
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