Brian Lynch

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Bibliographical details
Pity for the Wicked, with a preface by Conor Cruise O’Brien (2005) xxx . See AlsonDuras Press notice - infra.

The Woman Not the Name (2013) - Duras Press notice: ‘Will Ferris, a singer songwriter and boxer from Cork, has a secret past for which he has already paid a heavy price. But things are looking up a weekly gig in a Dublin pub leads to an appearance on The Late Late Show. Fame brings Will admiration, sex and success, but his enemies are gathering... A dark yet comic love story, The Woman Not The Name fuses a moral tale with the myth of Orpheus.’

[ See the Duras Press Brian Lynch webpage - online; accessed 19.11.2016; also Amazon Books - online; accessed 30.07.2017. ]

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Criticism
Maurice Hayes, ‘A Tract for the Times: Lynch’s poem on the North’, review of Pity for the Wicked, in The Irish Independent (q.d.; in 2005); also ‘Poet on a poet’s life’, in Books Ireland (Nov. 2005), p.253.

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Reference

[ There is an independent Brian Lynch - website. ]

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Quotations
“The Firefly and the Coin”: ‘A firefly flew into the room, / A coin fell off the bed. / One rang, one wandered through the gloom, / Which made me turn my head? // The glower plotted up a cone, / The coin a spiral drew. / Neither acted on its own. / I paused, and so did you. // The spinning money got the drift, / And yawned from side to side. / The gleaming intervals grew swift. / Then both together died. // The flashing ceilinged and went out / Just as the whirring.stopped. // Your hand, moth pale, lit on my mouth. / And so the penny dropped.’ (From New and Renewed Poems 1967-2004; printed in The Irish Times, 31 July 2004).

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Commentary
Gerald Dawe, review of Pity for the Dead, in The Irish Times (4 June 2005), Weekend: […] ‘the voice that comes through Lynch’s poem is convincing, both in its strengths and in its weaknesses. [… It] is also unique in its unflinching condemnation of the Provisional movement and its leadership, and of the moral responsibility of the Southern state (and “almost the entire intellectual class”) for both. Framed within an historical narrative that many will utterly reject, Lynch’s response to the “peace process” and what he calls its “anti-language … excavated of meaning”, is shaped by indignation and outrage at the moral free-fall he associates with those compromises […] that the Irish state has made, under different administrations, with the Provisional movement. […] / As a substantial part of our civic past has been perverted by political violence, Brian Lynch’s poem refuses to let those whom he considers direclty responsible slip by without “the repentence of the killers […] we have not heard the remorseful word.”. […] Nor should the “political and moral catastrophe” be further compounded by “our efforts to conciliate the murderers”, since “we were tainted by their shame”. The “stern memory which Lynch insists upon is what makes Pity for the Wicked such a deeply troubling work, both as self-doubting poem and as politically charged document, not so much a wake-up call as a shattering alarm in the middle of the night. [Quotes: ’I’d written verse - what match was that for screams, / For cries of real death? No match was made.’].

Maurice Hayes, ‘A Tract for the Times: Lynch’s poem on the North’, review of Pity for the Wicked, in The Irish Independent (q.d. 2005): ‘Brian Lynch in this reprint of his long poem about the North, originally published in 1998 and now republished with an added preface by Conor Cruise O’Brien, an introduction and appendices, preserves an ancient and necessary verse form. His poem burns with anger and outrage, with the savage indignation that lacerated the heart of Swift. We expect satirists to expose hypocrisy, injustice, corruption, to rage, to caricature and to lampoon. We do not expect them necessarily to be fair. In this long poem Brian Lynch does Irish society a service by tearing the mask from murder and terror, by dispelling the fog of romanticised amnesia in which horror is embalmed as history is rewritten to justify a campaign of murder, by trying to restore the meaning of language. […., &c.]’ (For full text, see infra.)

Paul Franz, review of Winner of Sorrow, in Harvard Review (6 March 2015): ‘[...] Lynch’s work is remarkable not only for its sustained, subtle evocation of Cowper’s emotional and imaginative life, but also for the light it shines on the figures surrounding him, many of whom appear - if at all - in historical and biographical records as only the faintest names and snatches of writing and reported speech. Despite the book’s structure of frame and flashback, its world is not exclusively seen through Cowper’s eyes. Instead, Lynch’s constantly shifting perspective animates his narrative with the interests, fears, and desires of even his most minor characters. This sense of the inner dimension of shared experience, combined with his dramatist’s ear, make Lynch a master at staging conversations, in all their cross-purposes, omissions, and unforeseen connections. / It is this underlying empathy, combined with the clarity, resonance, and wit of its language, that establishes the continuity between The Winner of Sorrow and Lynch’s earlier work as a translator (of Paul Celan) and poet (his Poems: New and Renewed appeared in 2004). This unusual novel should lead readers not only back to Cowper, but also to the distinctive earlier works of Brian Lynch.’ [End.]

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Notes
Crooked in the Car Seat (Dublin Theature Fest., 1979): Brian Lynch gives an account of the production problems with his play, first chosen for the Abbey by Hugh Leonard as Script Editor, and then rejected by the Board under Tomás Mac Anna, alleging ‘bad language’ as the reason. Hugh Leonard resigned from the Abbey in the sequel. It was then produced by Phyllis Ryan of Gemini on his advice in the Eblana Th. at Busáras, directed by Donald Taylor Black. Lynch records that Patrick Mason refused the task because of the nature of the central character - ‘a self-hating sharp-tongued gay journalist’ (acc. Lynch) - and reports the unenthusiastic reviews from the London Times and Irish Times reviewer Maeve Kennedy, along with another from J. J. Finnegan (‘doyen of Dublin theatre critics’) who compared it to Look Back in Anger. The 2023 publication from Duras is a revision of the original play-script. title comes from a Van Morrison song whose line is misheard by the central character (‘And I’m conquered in a car set, / And I’m staring straight at you’- as is that of Caught in a Free State (1983). (See Brian Lynch webpage - online; accessed 4.08.2023.)

Pity for the Wicked (2005) - Duras Press publisher’s notice: ‘Pity for the Wicked began as a reflection on Bloody Sunday, the IRA murder of Patsy Gillespie (the so-called Human Bomb) in 1990, and the loyalist murder of Margaret Wright in 1993. But because the writing coincided with the IRA ceasefire, the Canary Wharf bombing and the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe, these events are dealt with in the poem. The Introduction brings the theme up to date, including the Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney, but pays particular attention to the shooting of the RUC reservist Alice Collins, the Omagh bombing and the claims made for the peace process by former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. An appendix describes how the Margaret Wright section of the poem was banned on the grounds that it might have libelled her murderers. A further appendix reproduces Dáil exchanges about Omagh and asks questions about meetings between Real IRA Chief of Staff Michael McKevitt and the Taoiseach’s adviser Martin Mansergh.’ Conor Cruise O’Brien writes: ‘I believe that the publication of Brian Lynch’s book will contribute to the isolation of Sinn Féin-IRA, and their eventual disappearance from the political map of Ireland.’

Note: Fontsinuse shows the Duras printing together with a copy of the original Programme of the play produced at the Eblana with cast, credits and some hand-written notes apparently associated with its owner, then a resident at St. John of God (Alcohol Unit). (See Fontsinuse > Crooked &c., - online; accessed 04.08.2023.)

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