I’ve had Plumly’s “Boy on the Step” on my bookshelf since about 1990, but it had been years since I gave it much consideration. My own interests and aesthetic tendency’s have changed a lot since then, so I’ve been recently going back to books I’d abandoned long ago. This book has been one of the more rewarding re-discoveries for me.
Consider this last few lines from Fountain Park:
” all kinds of things
pass witness and are true about this last
light of day coming onto winter,
the trees almost transparent in the dark,
the high grass green as lawns in the hereafter.”
And here’s a more recent one published in the New Yorker last summer:
Cancer
by Stanley Plumly July 12, 2010
Mine, I know, started at a distance
five hundred and twenty light-years away
and fell as stardust into my sleeping mouth,
Continue the poem here
And here’s a video of Plumly reading Infidelity, one of the most startling poems in the book.
Now that I’ve gone back to this book, I’ll have to check out his newer works.
Grant Clauser 