Jonathan Clarke at The Hedgehog Review:
Thomas Lynch may be the only major poet-undertaker writing in English, which must count as a surprise. The two professions seem so perfectly aligned—or rather, so hopelessly entwined. Death poetry is almost its own genre in English, filling up the anthologies: Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”; Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”; and most famously, Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Even as our poets ponder birth, beauty, and desire, we expect them to keep the end in view. A major poet who did not wrestle with death would be like a horse who only makes right turns.
As a poet, Lynch prefers the received forms, especially the sonnet. As an undertaker, he is working within received forms, too. In the 2007 PBS Frontline special, “The Undertaking,” set inside his family’s funeral home, he proceeds as judiciously as his late friend, Seamus Heaney, composing a villanelle. We observe Lynch’s meeting with a young couple whose toddler son is terminally ill. They can’t decide whether they want him buried or cremated. “You’ll want to look to your son to guide you,” Lynch tells them. “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do. I promise you. You’ll know what to do.” Lynch seems to be a man to whom others instinctively turn in a crisis. There aren’t many better qualifications for an undertaker—or for that matter, a poet.
More here.
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