Thomas Lynch

Traces the author's numerous visits to the Ireland community where his grandfather lived one hundred years before, describing his relationships with local farmers, writers, clergypeople, and others and his observations on how the town and its people reflect the larger outside world. Reprint.

Thomas Lynch, poet, funeral director, and author of the highly praised The Undertaking, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award, continues to examine the relations between the "literary and mortuary arts." "Lynch engages the reader with a mixture of poetic and funerary elements....his voice is rich and generous." Richard Bernstein, New York Times "[W]hat makes him such a fine essayist is that it's just the business of everyday life and death to him." Los Angeles Times Book Review "Few readers will walk away from this volume less than stunned and grateful." Jay Parini, author of Benjamin's Crossing "A luminous work of words." Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains"

In Still Life in Milford Thomas Lynch tenders poems on life and death, history and memory, the local and the larger geographies. " Thomas Lynch's] poems . . . are as stark and graceful as geese lifting off backwater. The poems trace from the rural midwest to London and County Clare, a quiet elegy of loss and testament. But then Lynch is by trade a mortician, and by craft a bard."--Amazon.com " Lynch] evinces a steady wisdom drawn from years of passionate attention to daily experience."--Seattle Weekly

Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director. These are essays of rare elegance and grace, full of fierce compassion and rich in humour and humanity - lessons taught to the living by the dead.

The poems in Grimalkin - Thomas Lynch's first publication in Britain are all concerned, in one way or another, with achieving a balance in the face of gravity.

A collection of original essays by specialists in the field, this book examines the crucial budgetary and financial management problems that face the United States government and makes concrete recommendations on how current processes can be improved. The authors make it clear that although the present federal budgetary and financial management systems are not working, the case is far from hopeless. Several chapters analyze the flaws in the federal budget-making process that lead to deadlock between the president and Congress and ultimately to higher deficits. To remove the checks and balances system from its present political stalemate, a workable two-stage budgetary process is suggested and bipartisan action at the highest level is strongly urged. Another chapter explains the context in which forecasting is used in federal government budget making and addresses the problem of the failure to predict the yearly budget deficit with reasonable accuracy. Proposals for improving public financial management include centralizing financial management functions, improving debt collection practices, eliminating deficiencies in the application of information technology, and privatizing entities such as the postal service, AMTRAK, and Social Security. Providing clarification of complex issues together with constructive approaches to reform, this book will be of interest to both general readers and scholars, students, and professionals concerned with government, public policy, and financial management.