Thanks, Robin, I must get hold of Lynch's books.
So far on the web I have found merely this from an interview:
How much are forms still influencing
your work?
LYNCH
They’re very handy for me. I love them, and form has changed a lot.
I think one of the last poems in this new book is called “Refusing, at 52,
to Write Sonnets.” I was younger then. It was a fifteen-line poem; I just
miscounted. [Laughs.] Literally. And I’ve been writing sin-eater poems.
Somehow, this guy turned up again. He’s been around since the first
book of poems I wrote, and he’s always going to appear in twenty-four
line apparitions because the first one was twenty-four lines, so having
that form helps.
But form is such an open thing. etc
Quoting ROBIN HAMILTON <[log in to unmask]>:
> Thomas Lynch (the Undertaker Poet) has a poem about this, set in Ireland, no
> specific date I think but maybe turn of the 19/20th century, called
> (appropriately enough) "The Sin-Eater".
>
> I can't remember which of his books this comes from, I think later than
> _Skating With Mary Jane_, but it's the first poem in the book.
>
> Don't have it to hand as I'm currently twice removed from my library, but
> it's a fine poem, as is all of Tom Lynch's work in prose and verse that I've
> read.
>
> (Admission of special interest -- I've heard Tom Lynch read, met him, and
> liked him, so I may be a bit biased. A nice person and a fine poet and
> memorialist.)
>
> Robin
>
> --- On Mon, 8/2/10, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > From: Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject: the sin-eater
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Date: Monday, 8 February, 2010, 3:54
> > In the late 17th century, the
> > Englishman John Aubrey described sin-eating like
> > so:
> > “When the Corps was brought out of the house, and layd on
> > the Biere, a Loafe of
> > Breade was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater
>
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