Thanks to a snail-mail correspondent, I recently (and serendipitously) learned of Thomas Lynch, undertaker and essayist, whose splendid prose regularly reveals his own poet’s heart.

WORK

There are those, too, who are ethnically predisposed in favor of funerals, who recognize among the black drapes and dirges an emotionally potent and spiritually stimulating intersection of the living and the dead. In death and its rituals, they see the leveled playing field so elusive in life. Whether we bury our dead in Wilbert Vaults, leave them in trees to be eaten by birds, burn them or beam them into space; whether choir or cantor, piper or jazz band, casket or coffin or winding sheet, ours is the species that keeps track of our dead and knows that we are always outnumbered by them. Thus immigrant Irish, Jews of the diaspora, Black North Americans, refugees and exiles and prisoners of all persuasions, demonstrate, under the scrutiny of demographers and sociologists, a high tolerance, almost an appetite, for the rites and ceremonies connected to death.

Furthermore, this approval seems predicated on one or more of the following variables: the food, the drink, the music, the shame and guilt, the kisses of aunts and distant cousins, the exultation, the outfits, the heart’s hunger for all homecomings.

—Thomas Lynch
—from The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

WORD(S)

darkle. verb. To lie darkling; to show darkly; to grow dark; to make dark. Coined by Byron as a mistaken back-formation from darkling (taking place in the dark, characterized by darkness, showing dark) and a convenient rhyming antonym for sparkle. Larry Trask writes that it’s “as if Byron had heard the phrase my darling wife and concluded that my wife darls a lot.”

“Her cheek began to flush, her eyes to sparkle,
And her proud brow’s blue veins to swell and darkle.”
(Byron)

“Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o’er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.”
(Byron)

“…the apartment had light at the front and at the back, and two or three rooms had glimpses of the day through small windows let into their corners; another one seemed lifting an appealing eye to heaven through a glass circle in its ceiling; the rest must darkle in perpetual twilight.” (William Dean Howells)

“Barrel vaults darkle above the rose. The window reverses all normal disclosure—everything solid is here black, all that is light is brilliant color.” (David Foster Wallace)

WEB

1. Lorraine Loots’ Paintings for Ants. The tiny! The beautiful! The amazing! The intricate!

2. The best stories in Sports Illustrated “60 years, 60 iconic stories” collection go well beyond the athlete or sport that is ostensibly the subject. Try a few.

3. Some people feel down and head to PornMD…others go for Bookshelf Porn (and some, of course, enjoy both).

4. Inspired by Shinto shrine prayer walls, Post Secret, and the process of catharsis and consolation → Candy Chang’s “Confessions”.

5. Today in 1948 poet, essayist and undertaker Thomas Lynch is born. Lynch won the American Book Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, has published everywhere, had two documentaries made about him and been on television many times…and I just heard of him. I don’t (yet) know about Lynch’s poetry, but I strongly recommend his book of essays, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. feels the feline: “The Tippi Hedren story and photos hit close to home. I keep expecting to find myself eaten by our eight dogs, and the ROI on Roar reminded me of our painfully unsuccessful, ongoing real estate investment.”

• Reader L. wonders: “What’s up with Tippi Hedren and the lions and The Birds?”

• Reader S. dug a little deeper: “There’s interesting info in the Wikipedia entry on the Shambala Preserve created by Hedren. For instance: Michael Jackson’s lions live there now and Melanie Griffith, who was attacked by lions during the filming of Hedren’s lion movie, narrated a documentary about it.”

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