The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

by ThomasLynch (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $4.40

  The American poet, Thomas Lynch, is also hired to bury the dead, to cremate them and 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 and his ears tuned to the vernacular sound of love and grief. In these 12 essays is the voice of both witness and functionary. Here is homage to parents who have died and children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave-markers, gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides - a collection of lessons taught to the living by the dead.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $6.58

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $15.97

  Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or cremate them and 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 and grief. In these twelve essays is the voice of both witness and functionary. Lynch stands between 'the living and the living who have dies' with the same outrage and 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 and to children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave-markers, gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides. These are essays of rare elegance and grace, full of fierce compassion and rich in humour and humanity - lessons taught to the living by the dead.