Plumly, Stanley

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Search Party: Collected Poems
William Matthews
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Poetry Blues: Essays and Interviews (Poets on Poetry)
In My Father's Footsteps: A Memoir
Collected Poems
The Selected Levis (Pitt Poetry Series)
Poet's Choice

ASIN: 061856585X

Book Description

When William Matthews died, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, America lost one of its most important poets, one whose humor and wit were balanced by deep emotion, whose off-the-cuff inventiveness belied the acuity of his verse. Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.

The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Bread Loaf Anthology)

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The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Bread Loaf Anthology)

Manufacturer: Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology
The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)
Researching and Writing Across the Curriculum (3rd Edition)
Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology (Open Market Edition)
Continental Drift (P.S.)

ASIN: 0874519500

Book Description

The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry includes more than 80 of America's most vital poets writing at the end of the century. Comprehensive and eclectic, the anthology provides an impressive and representative range of poetic voices and styles. Most of the poems have been written in the past five years and most have not yet been collected in books. As a result, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry is unusually fresh, immediate, and perfect for classroom use as well as pleasure reading.

Includes Agha Shahid Ali, Frank Bidart, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Louise Glueck, Marilyn Hacker, Michael Harper, Edward Hirsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Campbell McGrath, Heather McHugh, William Matthews, W. S. Merwin, Linda Pastan, Robert Pinsky, Alberto Rios, Gerald Stern, Mark Strand, James Tate, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Rosanna Warren, C. K. Williams, C. D. Wright, Charles Wright, and many others.

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Out-Of-The-Body Travel
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (American Poets Continuum Series ; Vol. 14)

ASIN: 0912946369

Summer Celestial (American Poetry Series)

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One of the Poetry Collections I Turn to Again and Again

Summer Celestial (American Poetry Series)
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

One of the Poetry Collections I Turn to Again and Again.......2000-04-03

Stanley Plumly is one of my very favorite poets, and one of my greatest influences. Three of the poems from this collection stand out in particular: "After Whistler"; "Promising The Air"; and "Maples". "After Whistler" includes such turns of phrase as "There in the calendar dark" which are words you feel physically and understand emotionally.

In "Promising The Air", Plumly describes a woman who dreams of a small boy and cries for him in her sleep, and he finishes the poem by dedicating it to her and "for the boy"-- which is a Stevens-like abstraction of acknowledging the real force and presence of the dream boy.

In "Maples", Plumly describes a vacation with his parents, the "honey moon" in the trees, and driving along the road in the dark.

Book Description

Stanley Plumly is one of his generation's most important poets. He was born in Barnesville, Ohio, in 1939, and grew up in the lumber and farming regions of Virginia and Ohio. Writing in the Atlantic, Peter Davidson said of his work, "Plumly's rich, dense poems give off a special fragrance, the incense of the English Romantic movement mingling with the forest odors from the Old Northwest Territory between the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes."

This volume collects fifteen of Plumly's [previously published] essays on poetry and art, including the seminal "Chapter and Verse," "Sentimental Forms," and "The Abrupt Edge." Meditating on poems by Keats, Stevens, James Wright, Plath, and Matthews, on Emily Brönte's prose, and paintings by Whistler, Plumly returns again and again to essential matters: the impulses, occasions, and places out of which art arises and the forms by which imagination gives it shape.

Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000
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Stellar Perspective

Magnificent

Heard it, bought it

An Essential Poet

Master work

Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
United States | Single Authors | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Argument & Song: Sources & Silences in Poetry

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Museum

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ASIN: 0060938056

Book Description

<blockquote>Thirty years of visionary verse from one of America's most memorable lyric poets.</blockquote>

From the pastoral to the familial, from the mundane to the transcendent, Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 is a musical, multifaceted, and deeply moving series of poems, presenting a panoramic view of Plumly's three decades of poetic inquiry.</p>

Customer Reviews:

Stellar Perspective.......2002-12-06

Stanley Plumly's poems could be described as quietly magnificent. There is an amplitude and gracefulness to the work that hearkens strongly back strongly to the nineteenth-century Romantics, in particular Keats: "Like some dreams, they appear, then reappear, / cloistered in the space of their own wounding, / their public mourning, their gravity's gray coat. / Even at a distance, as if drawn by being seen, / they come straight at you, the almost elegant woman / in the aisle, the tall young birdlike silent / weeping man . . ." (from "Grievers").
Yet Plumly never sounds antique. Reading the poems in this new, retrospective collection is an experience in following a thought process that is physically embodied in phrases, complex sentences and vivid images embedded in articulate lines. Doubters who question whether any of today's poets have schooled themselves sufficiently in the hard apprenticeship of Yeats and other poetic forbears should listen and take heart: "Sound of the breath blown over the bottle, / sound of the reveler home at down, light of / the sun a warbler yellow, the sun in / song-flight, lopsided-pose. Be of good cheer, // my father says, lifting his glass to greet / a morning in which he's awake to be / with the birds . . ." (from "Cheer").
Plumly's poems are muted in manner yet never tentative; sonorous and fluent while refusing to be merely beautiful. He persists by searching out new ways to see, new ways of grasping what it means to be alive in these drastically fragile bodies. His book's title alludes to a strangely ambiguous evocation of parent and child lying beside one another - perhaps a small boy and his father, but more likely a diminished and failing father whose still vital son is recognizing in their unaccustomed intimacy a rare bridge across distance.
One of the wonders of this selection of Plumly's work drawn from thirty years is the way the book is arranged as a continuous sequence "in reverse chronological order," with only a brief author's note to indicate the original book titles. It is uncanny to see how comparable in acuity and eloquence the early and later poems really are in this fresh reading. The book lingers in its look back, filled to the brimming point with birds, trees, and people that are gone, all gone, residing now only here. Truly, a life's work.
Plumly has never been prolific - three slender books in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, and only one in the 1990s. Yet his ode-like soundings of mortality have accumulated in power and resonance. His voice is; the care with which these poems were made is evident in every line. This, then, from "Doves in January": "Long o's, long o's, long o's, and then a pause, / a whistle more like someone's voice than song, / as if in a moment a day could pass // from nothing's grief to some becoming grace.

Jim Schley, who lives in Vermont, is the author of a poetry chapbook, One Another (Chapiteau, 1999).

Magnificent.......2001-08-07

Stanley Plumly isn't just a great poet. He is possibly the greatest American poet writing today and this compilation is a journey through some of the best poetry of the past thirty years. The depth of thought present in this work and the manner in which that depth is conveyed hold ground by even the most demanding poetic standards. Having interviewed him in the past, I can vouch for Plumly's genius. One look at his writing is all that the reader needs to vouch for his talent. A talented writer when he began, he has honed his skills over the past thirty years to a level that borders perfect. This books belongs on the bookshelf of anyone whose tastes include good poetry. You won't find a better volume of modern American poetry around.

Heard it, bought it.......2000-10-28

I attended Plumly's reading here at Grinnell College two days ago. His voice was intoxicating-- sort of an articulate growl. I had to buy the book (and get it signed, of course). One of the most striking pieces, I believe, is "Wrong Side of the River," an excellent demonstration of his simple prose and resonating imagery. Beautiful.

An Essential Poet.......2000-06-09

This New & Selected by one of our finest poets, is a must-buy. Lyrical, tender, profound--his images will linger with you, and you will find yourself rereading and later quoting his lines.

Master work.......2000-05-21

Plumly's newest book brings together some of the best poems of his career...some of the best poems written in America in the last 30 years. I've read over ten volumes from April's "National Poetry Month" and nothing makes me wince more than those poets who feel the need to end each poem with that cryptic/cute/"stunning" last line that veers away from the poem's topic and story in an attempt to be wise. Plumly is in control of his material; even when he sums up a poem in a final line, it fits, it flows, it adds to the sum of the poem rather than leaving the reader wondering.

Book Description

In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds forth on a medley of topics ranging from jazz to nude photography, Byron to Elizabeth Bishop, opera to Emerson. Throughout, Matthews writes about his love of music, language, poetry, and art while illuminating the subtle and important ways in which the things about which he feels passionately help to define and shape him.

The book begins with a candid autobiographical essay, followed by an interview on the influence of jazz music on the poet's early work. Further into the collection, Matthews delves into the nature of the epigram and the work of jazz great Charles Mingus. Along the way, this revered poet offers insight into the work of this contemporaries, including W. S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Hayden Carruth, and Richard Hugo.

the book is as much autobiography and cultural criticism as it is literary nonfiction. It will be of interest to writers and teachers of writing, as well as to lovers of literature, language and music.

Sebastian Matthews teaches writing at Warren Wilson College. Stanley Plumly is Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.

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The Marriage in the Trees
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Many of the poems in The Marriage in the Trees, Stanley Plumly's sixth book of poetry, concern the passing of the author's parents. They have the power of the deeply personal, and are clearly, in their wisdom and mastery of form and language, the work of a mature poet, one of our finest. Images of trees and birds dominate these poems. Birds --owls, doves, crows, and cardinals --whether remembered from childhood or spotted in a rain shower at Union Square, frequently inspire Plumly's lyrical meditations. They serve as symbols of the vitality at the abrupt edges of life. Trees--losing their leaves in the autumn, blooming in the spring, providing wood for both a home as well as a casket and cover from exposure--stand watch over these poems as they do over the life around us, symbols of permanence amid the transience of life. "They/link the past, medieval to modern/the leaves still dark in summer, bronze and butter through hundreds of falls and winters./They're what's left of a larger thing." Memory, history, and family are powerful presences here, the past infusing the present with questions and with meaning. The Marriage in the Trees advances Stanley Plumly's standing as one of our strongest and most accomplished lyric poets.

Boy on the Step: Poems (American Poetry Series)

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Boy on the Step: Poems (American Poetry Series)
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Summer Celestial : Poems
Stanley Plumly
Manufacturer: Ecco Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ND3EAC

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