Skating with Heather Grace

by Thomas Lynch

Poems deal with balance, suicide, divorce, marriage, parents, children, death, nature, disappointment, and memories

Genres: Poetry

60 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Thomas Lynch has authored five collections of poetry, one of stories, and four books of essays, including National Book Award Finalist The Undertaking. He works as a funeral director in Milford, Michigan, and teaches at the Bear River Writer’s Conference.

Reviews

[Aleksandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

You must read the poem which contains the following line, "I recant all bitterness...I no longer want...your donkey lovers taken out and shot or spayed behind some chevrolet of doom".

The author is a 3rd gen undertaker from Michigan and reflects on what he reads, sees, his children his life. Lots of laughs tucked into disguise, but also somber thoughts.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a great poem in here where a man writes a birthday card to his ex-wife.

[Monica Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want this to sound like a print from Monet,
to seem French and unfinished and best at a distance,
the blank little title to say it was
only an instant, without any history
or future, not part of a sequence
and need not be made into a movie.
So here is the garden's rock bordering
and the lilac bush she bends under
and how her hair falls correctly from the
blue barettes, the packet of seed in her back pocket.
Also the small wrist making turns in the black dirt
and the face the ground makes when it looks up at her
like a woman does, all smiles and promise and forgiveness.
Her eyes and her lovers and the weather tomorrow
are not inclined here nor the names of the flowers
the seed will turn into nor the secret
Hosannas she sings nor the Easters
she dreams pressing seeds in her garden

Thomas Lynch, Woman Gardening

[Darla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This says it all. I hope Tom Lynch has it in him to write more from this now almost unspeakable loss of Heather Grace, his only daughter. I believe he does and will. It breaks my heart that he must.

https://www.lynchandsonsmilford.com/o...

[Heather Grace Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought the book because of the irony that a poet would write a book about me. :) Of course I realized it was another Heather Grace, but it was too much to pass up given that my very first poem (at five) was titled 'At the Arena,' about trying to skate. It was one of the first books I ever bought online.

Lynch is an undertaker who understands how humans deal (or don't deal) with life, death, and life after death, and that all comes through in his words. His work is real, engaging, humorous, sombre, and so beautiful. It's a book I turn to time and time again.

[Richard McDonough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently rereading, thanks to Carnegie Mellon reprinting this marvelous book of poems by Thomas Lynch. Never did a poet ...or any other writer I can think of... connect the act of pruning to the elemental. Love and loss and much that inhabits us in between. This is a powerful writer whose work is very close to me.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got to hear Thomas Lynch read at a poetry reading last spring and really enjoyed listening to him perform. The poems in this slim book are quirky, wise, and full of nostalgia.