"For twelve long years I've suffered this damned cat.../ though more than once I've threatened violence/ the brick and burlap in the river recompense/ for mounds of furballs littering the house."– "Grimalkin""Grimalkin," Tom Lynch informs me, "is dead." I couldn't help it, I had to know. The cat lasted almost eight years after the poem was written. "I had told Mike [his son] … [Read more...] about Chapter & Hearse
Thomas Lynch
Roots: The Lynch Family
The Lynch family derives from several independent clans. One of these is the Norman family De Lench who came to Ireland in the 12th century and were the most prominent of the "Tribes of Galway." These were the 14 Norman families who controlled this important medieval trading city and made it one of the few outposts in the West of Ireland that was loyal to the British crown. An … [Read more...] about Roots: The Lynch Family
Nora, an Excerpt
Even now, here 30 years since, when I turn to the southwest in Ennis from Shannon, and head out on the peninsula that ends at Loop Head, and somewhere on that road get my first wind of turfsmoke, I remember the first time and the sense that I had then of coming home."The name's good," the man in the customs hall had said, letting my bags pass without a look. I had a hundred … [Read more...] about Nora, an Excerpt