write or else

I spent about two hours over Friday and Saturday in the dark. This was something I had planned. During those two hours, give or take, I listened to a man speaking with a gentle accent, a sort of rolling of the vowels, a rising and falling of stresses, as he occasionally shifted from foot to foot, tapping the toe of his shoe to keep time. He smiled and laughed and peered into the darkness over his small glasses to either proclaim or jest. It was, by turns, hilarious and thoughtful.

I'm talking, of course, about Thomas Lynch.

He came to my school on Friday and gave a reading in the recital hall, where he was either accompanied or followed by a piece of music various students had composed for his poetry or essays. The music was often very good, and fantastic at least once and he seemed pleased by it. He read selections from "Sweeney," "All Hallows Eve," the first essay in Undertaking, and one poem whose name I cannot recall.
I went downtown to see him Saturday, my father, a copy of Still Life in Mitford, and my uncle's copy of Bodies in Motion and at Rest in tow. The talk was supposedly called "Undertaking Nonfiction" and was to be about the craft of nonfiction writing. But he didn't touch on that and instead read "Grimalkin" and told its story (a more compact version of which is in the essay of the same name). He read from some articles he had written, some poems I have not read, some essays I have, and talked the whole time about the whys of the writing. When asked, at the end, by some small child "Have you ever cremated an animal?" he answered, laughing, "Not on purpose."
So I went into the lobby, waving to people I know, and had the books signed. He asked me what I did and if I was in the MFA program at Eastern and then if I was going to stay here or go somewhere else for it. In my uncle Tom's book he wrote: "Uncle Tom, Namesake, etc. Best, TL." And in mine he wrote: "Walt- Write or else! TL, Spokane 2008."

Awesome.