Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or cremate them & to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director. In the conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open, his ears tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love & grief. In these twelve essays is the voice of both witness & functionary. Lynch stands between 'the living & the living who have dies' with the same outrage & amazement, straining for the same glimpse we all get of what mortality means to a vital species. So here is homage to parents who have died & to children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave-markers, gourmands & hypochondriacs, lovers & suicides. These are essays of rare elegance & grace, full of fierce compassion & rich in humour & humanity
- lessons taught to the living by the dead.