May 23, 1939

Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939 to April 11, 2019), an American poet, was,

'.... born in Barnesville, Ohio, and grew up in the lumber and farming regions of Virginia and Ohio. His father was a lumberjack and welder who died at age 56 of a heart attack linked to his alcoholism. Plumly’s parents, and his working-class upbringing, figure frequently in his work, especially his early books. Plumly earned a BA at Wilmington College, a Quaker school in Ohio, and a PhD at Ohio University.

'Plumly was the author of numerous collections of poetry, including In the Outer Dark (1970), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, and Out-of-the-Body Travel (1978), nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. ....'

An article on the artist continues:

'His collection Old Heart (2009) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His collection, Orphan Hours (2013), ...is shot through with Wordsworthian ‘spots of time,’ vividly recalled and recorded moments in which people and things—family members, lovers, friends, strangers on the street—come back to life.”

'Plumly was called one of the most English of American poets, and his devotion to the British Romantic poets was clear in his scholarly interstes and publications. His book on John Keats, titled Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (2008), was named runner-up for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Distinguished Biography, and his book The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb (2014) described a dinner hosted by the painter Benjamin Haydon for the three writers who were all on the cusp of literary greatness. Plumly’s other works of criticism...Argument and Song: Sources and Silences in Poetry (2003).

'Plumly’s honors and awards included fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1985 he married the poet Deborah Digges; they divorced in 1993. He taught at the University of Iowa and at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and was professor of English at the University of Maryland...'

In Plumly's poetry there is much to delight, like this description:

'First, the fence-sitting, followed by
the preening in a pool of early rain,
....'

This is from a poem entitled "Magpie," and a book titled Old Heart: Poems (2007).

The Englishness referenced above is apparent in this volume: Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Sublime (2018). Plumly builds a picture with details like this, from a letter Constable wrote in 1842:

'[An] angry neighbor has killed my fine black cat, who used to call me up in the morning, but she had been naughty, and killed one of his ducks.'

Elegy Landscapes was Plumly's last book.