Tim Lynch on “Dry”
I remember writing the first draft of this poem in my attic room in Collingswood, NJ one Monday morning, my day off. It took 4 hours to feel good enough to stand up from my desk, and I nearly passed out when I did, having had nothing but coffee and probably half a pizza the night before. My life felt like it was beginning again then. The thing about that is, you begin a new life in the rubble of the previous life, so it kind of just looks like what you already had, and it is. But you move through it differently. You can envision something other than more destruction. I think this poem was me writing to my old life, recognizing that it wasn’t actually another life, that it wasn’t actually gone from me, that it was just a part of me no one else could see anymore, and which I felt compelled to kill at any cost. I’ve always loved Lon (Creighton) Chaney Jr. and stories of old Hollywood. I saw myself in him, his stories, and I needed to accept what that meant, and accept that as I tried to walk through my newly envisioned life differently, I was not someone else. I had to accept that that was neither good nor bad, merely inescapable, and this poem has helped me live with that.