Thomas Lynch is the internationally-famous undertaker/ poet of Michigan. (I know he is internationally-famous because he gets an "advance praise" slot on the cover of Kate Berridge's recent "Vigor Mortis" with his name only, we are just expected to know who he is.) These books of essays incorporate much of his homespun wisdom, as well as self-referential musings about his own writing processes and about what it is to be a poet.
His wife leaves him, he gets divorced and gets custody of the kids. "I'd get the children bathed, their homework done. We'd say their little bedtime prayers and then I'd sneak downstairs to the day's remains - the sink full of dishes, the bathtub ring, the sad facts of the matter. I'd pour whiskey (sic) into a glass, assemble myself at my writing desk and take up revisions to a poem, sent back by some 'important' literary journal that paid nothing and was read by no-one, whose editor hadn't bothered beyond a form-letter version of the same rejection I saw in every aspect of my life." ('Bodies in Motion and at Rest', p. 190)
From the examples of his poems that he includes in this book, I would hazard a guess that I (if it was I that was standing in as Poetry Editor that week) would not have been wrong to send it back. I resent the phrase "hadn't bothered" though - at least I would have read it! I surmise from the "read by no-one" that he was not a subscriber himself (I would have checked), however, so, as a would-be first-time "unknown" contributor he would have had one strike against him already. If Mr Lynch ever happens to be involved in running a literary journal, he ought to apprize himself of the following: most of them, even the very best, run at a loss and require generous financial backing, sometimes from grant-making organisations but more often from private individuals: thanks to the power of the word processor and the photocopier, they are all inundated with thousands of contributions (I remember a pile of unread poetry contributions two feet high), but (should that be 'and'?) find it ever more difficult to hunt down genuinely publishable material: would-be contributors are strongly advised to subscribe (to help to keep the publication in question afloat), or failing that, at least to read it to see what style of material it is used to publishing: and last but not least, even if they were willing, editors just do not have the time to "bother" to write a literary critique of each submission by an unknown hopeful.
Apart from the evident fact that he rather likes the idea of styling himself as a poet and man of letters, flying to poetry conferences around the world, doing 'gigs' (in this context, poetry readings), and hanging out with 'other' hard-drinking poets, the two other obvious characteristics of Mr Lynch's delicately eerie literary personality are:
1. he writes a lot about the women he has had sex with, including where, how often, and whether relevant or not to the point he is making (I have to say he is no John Donne or even Earl of Rochester).
2. Like a lot of Americans of Irish extraction, he is obsessed with the idea of 'being Irish', occasionally including references to himself as Tomas (Gaelic form of 'Thomas'), drinking 'whiskey' and indeed drinking a lot in general, frequently averring that Sheamus Heaney is a great guy, and travelling to Ireland when younger to 'learn to speak with a brogue'. He also dwells, repetitively, on what it is to be an Irish Catholic. He might be surprised to learn how those lovable, easygoing Irishfolk can get privately irritated when some Yank matey, particularly one with a put-on accent, turns up and wanders around as if he owns the place.
On the subject of death, he has some astonishing apercus: "[To all the people who are] hell-bent or duty bound to let me in on what it is they want done to them when they are dead. Give it a rest is the thing I say. Once you are dead, put your feet up, call it a day, and let the husband or the missus or the kids or a sibling decide whether you are to be buried or burned or blown out of a cannon or left to dry out in a ditch somewhere. It's not your day to watch it, because the dead don't care." ('The Undertaking', p. 9) What a second-rate thought. "Put your feet up," indeed. If what he says is so, why would anyone ever have made a will, and why would the law, since Roman times or before, have protected an individual's right to decide on the disposition of his assets after his death?
Author link: Lynch Funeral Directors, his undertaker's firm site, has a link, if you look up "Links", to this famous author's homepage, or at least his agent's page.