{"id":36090,"date":"2008-05-21T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36090"},"modified":"2025-02-18T09:22:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:22:41","slug":"issue-63-a-conversation-with-thomas-lynch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-63-a-conversation-with-thomas-lynch\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 63: A Conversation with Thomas Lynch"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interview in Willow Springs 63<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works in Willow Springs 62<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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May 21, 2008<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

MARK CUILLA, MANDY IVERSON, AND AARON WEIDERT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS LYNCH<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Thomas<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit: Poetry Foundation<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Thomas Lynch is Milford, Michigan\u2019s funeral director, <\/strong>a job he took over from his father in 1974. Through his examination of death and mortality, Lynch has found much inspiration for his writing. But to label his work as being about death would be an oversimpli\ufb01cation. A 1998 Publishers Weekly<\/em> review stated that \u201cThe combined perspectives of his two occupations\u2014running a family mortuary and writing\u2014enable Lynch to make unsentimental observations on the human condition.\u201d Though Lynch often builds from themes of death and grief, his writing moves across the spectrum of life, o\ufb00ering \ufb02ashes of humor and insight along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says of himself, \u201cI write sonnets and I embalm, and I\u2019m happy to take questions on any subject in between those two.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1970, Lynch took his \ufb01rst of many trips to Ireland, reconnecting with family in West Clare. He has since inherited the ancestral cottage there, where he regularly spends time. His relationship with Ireland is documented in his most recent book of non\ufb01ction, Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynch is also the author of three books of poetry: Still Life in Milford<\/em>, Skating with Heather Grace,<\/em> and Grimalkin & Other Poems<\/em>. Lynch has also authored two essay collections: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade<\/em>, winner of the Heartland Prize for non\ufb01ction, the American Book Award, and a \ufb01nalist for the National Book Award; and Bodies in Motion and at Rest<\/em>, winner of The Great Lakes Book Award. His work has appeared in the New Yorker<\/em>, Poetry<\/em>, the Paris Review<\/em>, Harper\u2019s<\/em>, Esquire<\/em>, Newsweek<\/em>, the Washington Post<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em>, the L.A. Times<\/em>, the Irish Times<\/em>, and the Times<\/em> of London. We spoke with him over lunch at Caf\u00e9 Dolce in Spokane, Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AARON WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You associate a great amount of humor with death in your writing. Do you write with that juxtaposition in mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THOMAS LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t set out to write anything \u201cjokey.\u201d But I do think that the way things organize themselves, the good laugh and the good cry are fairly close on that continuum. So the ridiculous and the sublime\u2014they\u2019re neighbors. I think that\u2019s just the way it works. If you\u2019re playing in the end of the pool where really bad shit can happen, then really funny shit can happen, too. And then there are times you just take on a voice, where you\u2019re consciously thinking sort of in hyperbolic tones, and then, as long as you go with it, it\u2019s \ufb01ne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MANDY IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being an undertaker has obviously in\ufb02uenced your writing. How do you write multiple essays and books on the same subject?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not conscious, starting, of where I\u2019m going with it. I\u2019ve said before, and I think it bears repeating, what Yeats said to Olivia Shakespeare\u2014that the only subjects that should be compelling to a studious mind are sex and death. Those two, those are the bookends. And think of it, what else do we think of, what else is there besides that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write sonnets and I embalm, and I\u2019m happy to take questions on any subject in between those two. I think most people are that way. I think most people drive around all day being vexed by images of mortality and vitality. All they\u2019re wondering about is how they\u2019re going to die and who they\u2019re going to sleep with, or variations on that theme\u2014what job they\u2019re going to have, whether they\u2019re tall enough or skinny enough or short enough or smart enough or fast enough or make enough money, and all of it plays into these two bookends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re writing about life, you\u2019re writing about death. If you\u2019re writing about life, you\u2019re writing about love and grief and sex and all that stu\ufb00. Once I go outside those pales, I\u2019m tra\ufb03cking in what is, for me, not only the unknown, but also just not interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does a non\ufb01ction writer need to have an interesting life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My work as a funeral director is like most people\u2019s work. Parts of it are routine and dull. Parts of it are hilarious. Parts of it are very, very compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice Fulton is a poet I much admire and have been friends with for a long time. When she began teaching at Michigan, I said to her, \u201cAlice, you might be better o\ufb00 waiting tables than teaching students, because you have such a huge voice and you don\u2019t need any other voices interrupting you.\u201d Teachers are constantly being interrupted by the voices of their best students. They have high volume, good students do. So I would think that if you \ufb01nd yourself waiting tables or doing brain surgery or professional wrestling, anything that leaves room for your own sort of imaginative leaps, you\u2019re \ufb01ne. You\u2019re okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s handy to be a funeral director\u2014because how we respond to this predicament of death is sort of baseline humanity. I\u2019m very fond of sex, so that\u2019s handy in the other subject that Yeats said was important. That works out well. But I can\u2019t think of any work that you could disqualify from being just as interesting or just as much a metaphor for the human predicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You talk about how your job has its dullness and routines and hilarity. Do you realize later that there\u2019s something there to write about? If it\u2019s not the dullness and not the monotony, at what point do you realize, This is something I could write about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a writer, so I don\u2019t wait for something interesting. I write. Period. And if there\u2019s nothing interesting, I\u2019ll make it interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My son\u2019s a \ufb02y-\ufb01shing guide. There are days when the \ufb01shing isn\u2019t good. But by God, no one ever goes with him who doesn\u2019t get a good guide. Because he\u2019ll take you down the river and show you things you never saw before. And you will feel the excitement of catching and releasing \ufb01sh in the most unlikely ways and places. That\u2019s a good guide. Not that you come home with a slab of dead \ufb01sh, although there are people for whom that\u2019s the deal. For me, writing means I use language about whatever. The world is open to me that way. So if I stopped being a funeral director, I wouldn\u2019t stop writing or stop having things to write about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, writing starts with a line, or some imagination, or some notion, and I just go with it as far as I can. And you know how this works, this idea that you sort of set yourself a\ufb02oat on the language. And you think, I\u2019ll see how far it can take me before this little raft I\u2019ve cobbled together falls apart and everybody understands that I\u2019m really just a fraud, or drowning\u2014whichever comes \ufb01rst. But when it\u2019s really working, the reader goes with you to the most unlikely places. They take big leaps with you. I think Frost said that \u201cEvery poem\u2019s an adventure\u2014you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going with it.\u201d But you go. And writing non\ufb01ction, essaying, the personal essay, the familiar essay, is exactly the same as far as I\u2019m concerned. This adventure where you are counting on language, you are trusting in the language to keep a\ufb02oat whatever the notion or image or metaphor or intelligence or opinion or whatever it is you want to get across. The bridgings. And the nice part is that the times you sink, you don\u2019t have to send them out there. Oops, you have to go back and revise it, tie the slats together in a di\ufb00erent way, rope the little raft together and then send it out. And see how it goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the title essay in The Undertaking<\/em> was \ufb01rst published in The Quarterly<\/em>, it was titled \u201cBurying.\u201d They\u2019re not quite the same\u2014there are minor revisions throughout. Do you often continue to revise, even once work is published?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you read The Quarterly<\/em>, that would have been in 1988. It was later published in the London Review of Books<\/em>\u2014and Harper\u2019s<\/em> picked it up from there, and I probably made changes all along until it got into the book. I haven\u2019t made changes since. Once it\u2019s out in a book, you \ufb01gure it\u2019s done. Although, going back over, there are parts I remember in that Sweeney piece that I\u2019d like to mess around with. I won\u2019t be doing that soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Undertaking,\u201d you write that people think you have \u201csome irregular fascination with, special interest in, inside information about, even attachment to, the dead.\u201d The implication seems to be that it isn\u2019t true and yet so many of your essays deal explicitly with death. Do you see that as a contradiction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Undertaking,\u201d I followed that up by saying something like, \u201cA dentist is a dentist, but he has no particular fondness for root canals or bad gums.\u201d That is sort of his o\ufb03ce in brief, to take care of that, but what I wanted to point out is that it is not death\u2014death as a subject is dull, mum, it says nothing\u2014but all the meanings attached to the dead that are the basic stu\ufb00 of human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When anthropologists are trying to \ufb01gure out the place at which that walking anthropoid crossed the human barrier, it is when the anthropoid began to notice its mortality. I mean, that is the signature event\u2014that we do something about mortality. Other living, breathing, sexy things don\u2019t. Cocker spaniels, rhododendrons\u2014they don\u2019t bother with that stu\ufb00. They don\u2019t seem to care about others of their kind dying. We do. And that, to me, is the signature of the species. I could just as easily argue that all I\u2019m writing about is human beings, humanity. And Humanity 101 is mortality. Humanity 102 is sex. Or maybe it\u2019s the reverse. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite a few of your essays deal with political issues: abortion, big business vs. small business, euthanasia. Do you think non\ufb01ction writers have an obligation to engage with the outside world? Or even get political?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both. We were talking earlier about the reason that poets aren\u2019t read is because we don\u2019t hang any of them anymore; we don\u2019t take them seriously; we don\u2019t think that poetry can really move people to do passionate things. But poets did. Poets could change cultures. Before there was so much contest for people\u2019s attention, poets were the ones who literally brought the news from one place to another, walking from town to town, which is how we got everything to be iambic and memorable and rhymed and metered because the tradition was oral before it was literary. And I do think we are obliged. Maybe it\u2019s not just to opine about the issues of the day, but I think we are obliged to step outside of our own work and consider other writers\u2019 work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers should review writers\u2014to say, \u201cThis, you might like.\u201d If we don\u2019t have a go at the marketplace of ideas and writing and poetry and the rest of it, then how can we expect people to just take it up without any sort of guidance? That\u2019s the great regret about the disappearance of the independent bookstore. You can buy a lot more books on Amazon, but you don\u2019t know whether or not you\u2019ll like them or why you should read them. Whereas you stumble into a proper bookstore, and someone on that sta\ufb00 has read the stu\ufb00 you\u2019re picking up and will tell you, \u201cYou won\u2019t like that,\u201d or \u201cYes, you will,\u201d or \u201cYou should try that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think writers, particularly poets, should be in the opinion pages and on the record about certain things. Now, some of that I come by only through experience; I remember the \ufb01rst time I got a call from someone at the New York Times<\/em>\u2014asking if I\u2019d given any thought to the idea that we could \ufb01nd out who the Unknown Soldier was, from Vietnam, because they\u2019d come up with the DNA technology. They had narrowed it down to two people, and they knew they had the DNA, and they knew if they disinterred the body from Arlington they could tell. And the question of the day was, Should we? They thought maybe I\u2019d have an opinion about that. And I said, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve never thought about that, but now that you mention it, interesting thought. I\u2019ll bet I would have something to say about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the editor said, \u201cThat\u2019s nice. Can you give us eight hundred words by tomorrow at \ufb01ve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I thought, Well, I\u2019m an artist, and they don\u2019t talk to poets like that. And I said, \u201cWell, what\u2019re you going to do for me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he said, \u201cWell, we\u2019re going to give you a million and a half readers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s like drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I said, \u201cFine, I\u2019ll have it ready for you.\u201d And I did. Course, whores that they are, they had sent out to several other writers\u2014not so artistic, but faster\u2014and they got what they wanted faster, and they booked it. But I did send the piece to the Washington Post<\/em> and they took it. And I thought, Aha, this is how it works, to be ready for whatever\u2019s there. I\u2019ve been sort of \ufb01ddling with the advantageous ever since. I like the idea that eight hundred words could just [snaps \ufb01ngers] tweak the world a little bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you still do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all the time, but enough so that a year doesn\u2019t often go by that I don\u2019t have a couple pieces in. Because it\u2019s a good exercise\u2014then it\u2019s just like targeting. I can remember thinking I wanted to say something about the wonders of the changes in Ireland, and I thought that St. Patrick\u2019s Day would be the perfect day to get this published in the New York Times<\/em>. Think of all the Irish-Americans who would read it. So I wrote this piece and I sent it to them the week before. I said, \u201cNow, this is only good for one day.\u201d And by God, they took it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nice thing is they title everything. You can come up with the best titles\u2014they change them. But the title they gave it was the most brilliant one\u2014\u201cWhen Latvian Eyes are Smiling,\u201d they called it, and I loved it, and they had the most beautiful graphic with it. It\u2019s just like playing multidimensional chess with these people. Because they\u2019re all smart young editors who care less who you are or what you do; they just want the best page they can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve read that you consider Dr. Jack Kevorkian a serial killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do think of him as a serial killer, and so possessed of his own importance about his role. I\u2019ve buried suicides, and I\u2019m impressed by their resolve and it bothered me that something on the order of seventy percent of his \u201cpatients,\u201d or victims, were women. It seemed like a bizarre and cruel kind of gender-norming. The known fact is that women attempt suicide by a factor of ten compared to men. And men, this is a funny word, \u201csucceed\u201d at suicide more than women. Kevorkian seemed to be like the helpful hand who would sort of level that playing \ufb01eld. But he was not killing terminal cases any more than nonterminal\u2014except in the philosophical sense that we\u2019re all dying\u2014and so, for me, the slippery slope was not all that far between what he was doing and a clinic at the corner where my daughter would go if she didn\u2019t get a prom date\u2014and that\u2019s a painful, painful experience. Why shouldn\u2019t she be able to claim su\ufb03cient pain to get her assistance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mistrust judges and I mistrust lawyers and I mistrust politicos when it comes to life and death matters. I think they\u2019ve made a mess of war. I think they\u2019ve made a mess of capital punishment. I think they\u2019ve made a mess of abortion. Not because I think there\u2019s a right way or a wrong way to think about reproductive choices. Twenty-\ufb01ve years after Roe v. Wade we\u2019re still carping about it\u2014thirty years now. You have to say it\u2019s not a great law if we\u2019re still carping about it. Settle law when it\u2019s settled, you know. Whatever the outcome, the way they got there was not right. Didn\u2019t work. Hasn\u2019t worked. I\u2019m much more trustful of the woman who puts a pillow over her dying husband\u2019s face to save him another round of chemotherapy. She\u2019ll live with the moral implications, and she might even live with the legal implications, but I\u2019d rather deal with those on a case-by-case basis than have this crackpot man in the van running around doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that was instructive to me was that the talk in the culture about it was so disembodied. It was all sort of like, Isn\u2019t this a nice option; doesn\u2019t this sound nice\u2014\u201cassisted suicide\u201d\u2014which is oxymoronic to begin with. I mean, take the words apart, and there\u2019s no way you can do that. And it wasn\u2019t until we showed it on TV, until we actually saw, that we went, Oh, that\u2019s wrong. And then he went to jail. As soon as we saw it, we knew it was wrong. But for most of four or \ufb01ve years we were going around as if we were having a conversation about radial tires. So yes, I do think of him as a serial killer, and I think he got his proper comeuppance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have an agenda with your writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, there are times I do. Most times, the agenda is just to \ufb01ll my o\ufb03ce as a writer. I write. When I write a poem, I do it for the pure pleasure of having that poem on the page. They are to play with. But when it\u2019s done, published, it\u2019s like it has its own digs; you\u2019ve done your part for it. But there are times when I\u2019ve consciously set out to change the discussion on a particular topic. And I think Phillip Lopate is very instructive on this, when he talks about essayists being, among other things, great contrarians. I always look not for the \u201cthis or that,\u201d but the \u201chave you thought of it this way?\u201d So that piece on abortion is not necessarily about abortion. It\u2019s about reproductive choices, and the costs of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I don\u2019t know of anybody yet who has \ufb01gured out exactly where I stand on abortion. I would think it a weakness of the piece if they could say, \u201cAh, he\u2019s one of those.\u201d Because the job of an essayist is not to be right, left, or center, this or that, but to make people think in ways they wouldn\u2019t have otherwise thought\u2014and to keep as many in the room as you can while you\u2019re doing it. Barack Obama is doing the same thing in his campaign\u2014he\u2019s trying to keep people in the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember wanting to say something about the shame and sadness of this war and how to frame that. I was sitting over in Ireland in August one year, reading about the president going o\ufb00 to Crawford, Texas, and I thought, I\u2019ll write something about the president and me, because he was on his ranch, I was on mine. So I did. And they took it, which was very nice, because it was another one of those pieces that was only good for three or four days, and they took it. I don\u2019t think the president reads the New York Times<\/em>, but people who work for him do, so at least it got to be part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever had any backlash from that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a piece about capital punishment, about Timothy McVeigh. It was the \ufb01rst federal execution in my generation. I\u2019m from a state that doesn\u2019t have the death penalty. So it was the \ufb01rst time that, clearly, I was one of those people they\u2019re talking about: When \u201cwe the people\u201d are killing McVeigh, I was one of them. This was my federal government killing this man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know the answer to whether I\u2019m for or against it; that answer is not available to me at the moment. But I do know that if it\u2019s being done in my name, I should be there for it\u2014or at least be allowed to watch it on TV. And the fact that they had prohibited that speci\ufb01cally was, to me, o\ufb00ensive. So I wrote about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greta Van what\u2019s-her-name, and Sean Hannity, they were all calling to see if I\u2019d go on, and I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think so.\u201d The letters to the editor were interesting, the ongoing conversation about it at the time. The same with the piece on reproductive choices\u2014oftentimes, I\u2019ll meet someone who has some vexation about that. And that\u2019s good. I like that. I think we should vex each other. But I\u2019ve never had a bad experience, I\u2019ve never had an \u201cI wish I hadn\u2019t done that\u201d\u2014one of those moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With poems, I have. I once wrote a poem about a former spouse that was one of those poems that would have been better o\ufb00 tucked away and found among papers. That said, there was a therapy in it\u2014in a very sel\ufb01sh way. But it was needlessly hurtful. I\u2019d like to think I\u2019ve evolved past that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you write poems that you know in advance will get tucked away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to avoid those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You try to avoid writing them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to write, period. And I think poetry is as good an axe as a pillow. You should be able to cut with it if you want to. But I do want to avoid hurting people inadvertently. I don\u2019t mind hurting people I intend to hurt\u2014but inadvertent damage is the thing I fear. And I think all writers are capable of it. You\u2019re dealing with powerful tools, you know; words are powerful business. I\u2019m not saying you should be guided by fear, but I think general kindness is still a better thing. It\u2019s just evolution. We want to be better people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MARK CUILLA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You deal with feminist themes in your poetry and non\ufb01ction. Do you consider yourself a feminist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d say humanist. I\u2019ve read a fair amount of feminist literature, and I was a single parent for a long time, which I think, for men, makes them feminists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the boxes you have to \ufb01ll in on a death certi\ufb01cate is, \u201cUsual occupation,\u201d and the next one is, \u201cType of business or industry\u201d\u2014funeral director, mortuary, writer, that type of thing. For years, I would often have a son or daughter or a surviving husband say, \u201cShe was just a housewife.\u201d And I can remember, after being the single custodial parent for years, thinking: You do it for a week and come back and tell me \u201cjust a.\u201d Because the e\ufb00ort to minimize the hardest work I\u2019ve ever done was o\ufb00ensive. I can only imagine what it would mean to a woman who had done it all her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the women in my life have been powerful, powerful women with strong medicine\u2014dangerous people. Every one of them. Some of them still are. My sisters are dangerous people. And my wife is a lovely, lovely person, but she\u2019s a powerful person. I just don\u2019t see them in any way, shape, or form as having ever traded on victim status. What\u2019s irksome to me about so much of the third-wave feminism of the day is that it did seem to tra\ufb03c in victim status. I remember being in Edinburgh one year for the book festival, and I was rooming near Andrea Dworkin in this beautiful hotel in Belgrave Circle. I\u2019d read just enough of her to know I wanted to meet her and talk to her and have a little go-round with her, you know. I sent her a note asking for that. I put it in her mailbox and got no response. I then saw her in one of the tents in Charlotte Square, where they do the festival. I said, \u201cPossibly you didn\u2019t get my note, but I\u2019d be very, very honored if I could take you for a cup of tea or co\ufb00ee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI won\u2019t have time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came away from that exchange thinking, Well, go piss up a rope. I did feel bad when she died. She was a much misunderstood person. Like most of us, our own worst enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CUILLA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you talk about the intersections between non\ufb01ction and poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that any kind of writing just depends on reading poetry. I can\u2019t imagine ever wanting to write anything at all if I hadn\u2019t \ufb01rst been completely smitten by poetry. I can\u2019t exactly tell you what it was I was smitten by, or when, or what it was that I read. I keep having to pour the shit in because I can\u2019t remember any of it, except bits and pieces. It\u2019s really exciting when you come across a poem that just lights up the room. For me, it\u2019s the thing without which nothing else would happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the poet\u2014the \ufb01ctionist, the non\ufb01ctionist\u2014is trying to disappear in the words. I once commissioned a painting of the island o\ufb00 the coast of our house in Ireland. I said to my son, \u201cI want a painting of Murray\u2019s Island. Could you paint one to hang over the mantelpiece? I\u2019ll give you enough money to make it worth your while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He set to work doing it and he\u2019s out there, and he\u2019s a perfectionist in all things and he was really getting agitated by this commission, you know. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I said, \u201cI want it to be unmistakably a Sean Lynch, and I want it to be unmistakably Murray\u2019s Island.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he says, \u201cThen I\u2019ll have to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I said, \u201cWell, you\u2019ve got it. That\u2019s exactly right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was one of those things where you would look at it and it\u2019s unmistakably Murray\u2019s Island, but it has his \ufb01ngerprints all over it. And I think it\u2019s the same with writing poems. Who it is that we\u2019re writing, or what version of yourself you channel is sort of random, really. You can take on di\ufb00erent voices. Non\ufb01ctionists do it, too, I think. Some days you come to play, some days you come to pray. It just comes to who shu\ufb04es in on the \ufb01rst sentence. And sometimes it shifts in the middle of it. What starts out as sort of basic expository writing becomes self-revelation. We don\u2019t know how that happens but if done deftly it really does seem seamless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Montaigne who says that \u201cIn every man is the whole of man\u2019s estate.\u201d Just start concentrating on something. Write about your toilet habits, what you had for dinner. What\u2019s that thing they always say when they\u2019re testing you for a microphone? Tell us what you had for breakfast. I\u2019d love to start an essay with what I had for breakfast and see where it went, just for the heck of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CUILLA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of your poetry clearly comes from the personal. Richard Hugo writes in The Triggering Town<\/em> that \u201cYou owe reality nothing, and the truth about your feelings everything.\u201d Does this hold true for your work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah. Well, the way you frame the pairing, yeah. Things don\u2019t have to be true in a\u2014I mean, I\u2019m not here to tell you all there is about how it was for me this morning, but there\u2019s something truthful about my keeping a record of it. And then you recognize something in yourself or something that\u2019s generally true of all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When writing doesn\u2019t work for me it\u2019s because somebody sets out and they are too self-enamored. And I think this is where James Frey got in trouble. It\u2019s not so much that he was lying; it\u2019s that he was trying to pu\ufb00 himself up. He was telling us lies about his experience not for the sake of some other truth, but in the service of him\u2014his own sort of heroic self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And heroes are tiresome ideas today. They really are. Because a hero always knows the end. They\u2019re going to win, or they\u2019re going to save the day and save the world. Essayists don\u2019t know the end. And poets don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Hugo\u2019s saying that the truth is, we\u2019re muddling through. We\u2019re going with the best of it. That\u2019s the truth of it today; we don\u2019t know the outcome of this. At least for poets and non\ufb01ctionists, this is the excitement, this is the \u201cessaying\u201d of it, this is the setting forth. Not that there isn\u2019t some bravery, but there are no heroics. It does take faith that the language will do its part if you do your part. The word itself is good that way\u2014all of the etymological roots of \u201cessay\u201d are really good there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WEIDERT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You deal with religion and religious issues in your work, but your examination seems to change from The Undertaking<\/em>, through Bodies in Motion<\/em>, to Booking Passage<\/em>, which deals much more explicitly with your own issues with religion. Could you talk about that evolution?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The longest piece in Booking Passage<\/em> is an e\ufb00ort to make sense of religious experience as a part of faith experience. With that whole piece about the church, it was handy to have a priest in the family and to have his pilgrimage and his sense of calling to work with as sort of the anchor for that piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we are trying to \ufb01nd ourselves in relation to whatever the hell is out there. Maybe the relationship between myself and whomever is in charge here is changing as time goes on. The \ufb01rst essay in The Undertaking was written in 1987 because Gordon Lish said, \u201cIf you write this, I\u2019ll publish it in a very important literary magazine that I edit,\u201d by which he meant that there would be no pay. But it really was the \ufb01rst time my non\ufb01ction was commissioned. And between 1987 and 2004, when I was writing the last of that book, one would hope that, as Muhammad Ali says, \u201cWe are di\ufb00erent people.\u201d If not, there\u2019s something very wrong. And my relationship with religiosity is changing a little bit over time, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John McGahern, a \ufb01ctionist I really admire, died in the spring of 2007. He had been sort of banned by the church in Ireland as a young writer. He had a brother or a cousin who was a priest, I think. Large Irish-Catholic family, orthodox upbringing. He had every reason to feel thrown out of the church and abandoned by the church, and his books were banned and censored, et cetera. Anyway, when he died, I was impressed by the fact that his instructions were to have them do the Requiem Mass and nothing more. He didn\u2019t want any eulogies, or opinions, or any of the sort of post-Vatican II add-ons. He just wanted the old words. And that\u2019s true\u2014and maybe this returns to your question about poetry and essaying\u2014that there is a ritual part of it. There is sort of an arti\ufb01ce to it all, sort of a structural beauty to it. I\u2019m still trying to \ufb01gure out how it works. I\u2019m glad you noticed some change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was on a panel a couple of weeks ago at a synagogue, called, \u201cThe Same but Di\ufb00erent.\u201d They took the title from me. There were hospice people and social workers and clergy, and I was to give the keynote speech about funeral customs and bereavement and how we respond to death\u2014that type of thing. The lunchtime panel was a rabbi, a priest, a pastor, and an imam. And one of the questions from the audience was, \u201cDoes religion ever get in the way of people?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They all gave predictable answers until the imam said, \u201cThere is no trouble with Islam. Muslims, however, are troublesome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I thought, Isn\u2019t it just so? I haven\u2019t any trouble with Catholicism or Christianity, but Catholics, myself included\u2014and particularly the reverend clergy\u2014can really put me through spasms of doubt and wonder. And here\u2019s the di\ufb00erence: I have come to think of them as articles of faith, as something that the life of faith requires us to doubt and wonder and ask and mistrust and think it over and ask again. And to check into the book-making. We are people of the book, so we should check into all the acknowledgement pages, the tables of contents and all that stu\ufb00 to see where they were \ufb01rst attributed. Because I think those boys got together and \ufb01gured out a way to change some of the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is where I\u2019m a feminist. The sooner they put women in charge, the better o\ufb00 we\u2019d be. I mean really. I was four-square in favor of women in the military, but for the wrong reasons. I thought that it would reduce our appetite for war as soon as women started being killed. It hasn\u2019t. And more\u2019s the pity. When I was a much younger man, I said, \u201cInstead of sending the young men out to do violence to each other for the sake of old men, which is how it\u2019s always worked, send women out to do kindnesses\u2014to old men.\u201d [Laughs.] And there will be no war. Now, that\u2019s probably not a feminist thought, but it could work no worse than what we\u2019ve got going now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your essay, \u201cY2Kat,\u201d you state repeatedly that writing is not therapy. However, in Bodies in Motion<\/em>, you talk about writing in a way that makes it seem like a saving grace. Do you think writing is edifying?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me about \u201cedifying\u201d\u2014the word, \u201cto edify.\u201d Tell me what you make of that word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Redemptive, maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. I love the idea of redemption from it. I do think\u2014and here, I defer to Mr. Rogers\u2014that if you can name the feeling, you can sort of keep track of it. What was Mr. Rogers always saying? \u201cName that feeling?\u201d Hugo goes on to the same thing. Tell us the truth about that feeling, not the heroic stance, where it doesn\u2019t bother me, but the stance that says, \u201cThat sucks and it hurts,\u201d or, \u201cThat makes me want to strangle whatever.\u201d Tell the truth about that. Yes, that can be redemptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what\u2019s more is that it brings around it a community of people who feel the same way or may someday be in the same predicament. That\u2019s precisely why we read, isn\u2019t it? To \ufb01nd out that we\u2019re not crazy or are at least crazy in defensible ways, that other people have exactly these same responses. Hugo was right about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CUILLA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Still Life in Milford<\/em>, you quote, as an epigraph to the \ufb01rst section, an art exhibition guide that reads, \u201cSubject matter is less important than personal vision, based at once on a physical intimacy with, and a metaphysical distance from the real world.\u201d How does this relate to your work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stole that from the museum in London. They were having an exhibit with still life. The second epigraph contradicts it, doesn\u2019t it? The \ufb01rst one says exactly what you\u2019ve recorded, and I stole it from the Hayward Gallery in London, where I was at this exhibit. And the second one says, \u201cIt is di\ufb03cult to make moral or intellectual claims from the arrangement of fruit or vegetables on a table\u201d\u2014which is what Still Life in Milford<\/em> is. My point was, I was trying to make some moral and intellectual claims for just that. I don\u2019t know about this \ufb01rst one. I can\u2019t remember, now, what drew me to that\u2014I\u2019m sure it was the notions of physical intimacy with, and metaphysical distance from, the real world. I\u2019m always drawn to the notion of the body in things\u2014the corpus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of my professional life has been marked by the disappearance of corpses in the funeral ceremony. Our culture is the \ufb01rst in a couple generations that attempts to have funerals with no bodies. We just disappear them. If you read the death notices in the paper today, you\u2019ll notice that most of them are going to involve some type of memorial event, sans body, sans corpse. Also, most likely, without sort of the gloomy stu\ufb00 that comes along with having a corpse in the room. But the way to deal with mortality is by dealing with the mortals. And you deal with death, the big notion, by dealing with the dead thing. And this you can try at home: Go kill a cat\u2014see how you get through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really, that story about the cat, \u201cY2Kat,\u201d has it right, up to the part before the cat\u2019s going to be dead. But after the cat died, the truth of it is that the way my son \ufb01gured out how to deal with the cat\u2019s death was by burying the cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re very good when it comes to cats and dogs. We just don\u2019t have a clue when it comes to our people. We have them disappeared without any rubric or witnesses or anything like that. And then we plan these, \u201cCelebrations of Life,\u201d the operative words du jour. These celebrations are notable for the fact that everybody\u2019s welcome but the dead guy. This, to me, is o\ufb00ensive and I think perilous for our species. So, in Still Life, one of the things I was trying to say is, Yeah, there is an intellectual\u2014an artistic and moral\u2014case that can be made for not only fruit and \ufb02owers in a bowl on a table, but also a dead body in a box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CUILLA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a series of sonnets in Still Life<\/em>, and several sonnets in Skating with Heather Grace<\/em>, and, at the end of Booking Passage<\/em>, you write about your early work in forms. How much are forms still in\ufb02uencing your work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re very handy for me. I love them, and form has changed a lot. I think one of the last poems in this new book is called \u201cRefusing, at 52, to Write Sonnets.\u201d I was younger then. It was a \ufb01fteen-line poem; I just miscounted. [Laughs.] Literally. And I\u2019ve been writing sin-eater poems. Somehow, this guy turned up again. He\u2019s been around since the \ufb01rst book of poems I wrote, and he\u2019s always going to appear in twenty-four line apparitions because the \ufb01rst one was twenty-four lines, so having that form helps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But form is such an open thing. There\u2019s a poet, my dear friend Michael He\ufb00ernan. I probably would not write anything had I not met Michael He\ufb00ernan. Certainly, I wouldn\u2019t have written books if I hadn\u2019t met Michael He\ufb00ernan. Over the years of our correspondence, we\u2019ve gotten to the point where we only correspond in poems; because we\u2019re both old and cranky, we piss each other o\ufb00, we\u2019re both recovering alcoholics\u2014you know, just land mines everywhere. We write poems back and forth and we seem to get along very, very well. So the form of the day is, I have to respond to what he says. He sends a poem called \u201cPurple.\u201d I send back one called \u201cRed.\u201d There\u2019s the form. All it has to have is red in it. I write one called \u201cEuclid goes to Breakfast with the Old Farts,\u201d and he writes me back something Euclidian. So the form is very, very free \ufb02owing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But having a task, which is the form itself\u2014this is what I want to say about this, and I meant to say it when you asked about poetry: I think poets made up sonnets and sestinas and pantoums, and all those other epic forms because nobody was asking them to write poems. People could care less. So the poets thought, Look, I\u2019ll give myself work to do. If I could jump through this hoop, surely they\u2019ll be impressed. And they set o\ufb00 to write these di\ufb00erent forms so people would say, \u201cOh, that\u2019s very clever.\u201d But they were making themselves do things they wouldn\u2019t otherwise do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is the hard part about essaying and poetry\u2014that you\u2019re setting out to do something you wouldn\u2019t otherwise do and you have no direction; it seems like chaos. And when you \ufb01nally \ufb01gure it out, and when you \ufb01nally get it right, it\u2019s just joyous when it\u2019s done. That\u2019s true of poetry and essaying. When you make that leap across a paragraph or over a stanza, and the reader goes with you and you really land it, then you think, Ah, I\u2019ve done something that\u2019s never been done before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always tell my students that it\u2019s very much like crossing water. And it is. You\u2019ve got to give readers some sort of standing stones to grab onto. But if you make it too easy, they\u2019ll get bored and fall in and drown. If you don\u2019t give them any stones, they\u2019ll say, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not going there with you.\u201d But if you can space those stones just perfectly, so that they can leap with you, when they get to the end they\u2019ll say, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I think of that?\u201d Sooner or later, they think they did think of that, and then they write something new. That\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n\n

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Thomas Lynch is Milford, Michigan\u2019s funeral director, a job he took over from his father in 1974. Through his examination of death and mortality, Lynch has found much inspiration for his writing. But to label his work as being about death would be an oversimpli\ufb01cation. A 1998 Publishers Weekly review stated that \u201cThe combined perspectives of his two … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36738,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36090\/revisions\/36738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}