Skating With Heather Grace

Often his subjects are commonplace his wife, dog and children, his work and the poems are set at home in Michigan and abroad, in Ireland and Italy. (Several of the pieces are about Argyle, a mythic Irish character.) Like his father, Lynch is an undertaker, and the poems that address death here are sagacious and overcome the risk of morbidity by embracing life while facing death. Other standouts are his tender meditation on his daughter, "Skating with Heather Grace," and the heartfelt, gritty perceptions of "Tatyana." Most of the pieces are composed in pentameters, the majority written in a capricious blank verse.

Publishers Weekly

THOMAS LYNCH’s poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The Times (of London, New York, Ireland, and Los Angeles), and elsewhere. His book, The Undertaking, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The PBS Frontline film based on this work won the 2008 Emmy Award for Arts & Culture Documentary. His first collection of stories, Apparition & Late Fictions, has recently been published by W. W. Norton. He lives in Milford, Michigan, and in Moveen West, County Clare, Ireland.