Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939 – April 11, 2019) was an American poet and the director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program.
Biography Plumly was born in Barnesville, Ohio in a working-class family with a farmland. He grew up in Ohio and Virginia. His working-class upbringing on farmland would feature heavily in his poetry and books. His upbringing was also influenced by Quakerism.
He graduated from Wilmington College in Ohio and taught for a number of years at Wilmington and at Ohio University, where he helped found The Ohio Review. He taught the writing program at the University of Maryland from 1985 to 2009. He was called "the most English American poet" and held Keats in high regard.
Plumly died on April 11, 2019, in Frederick, Maryland, at the age 79 of multiple myeloma.
Bibliography Poetry Collections
How the Plains Indians Got Horses (Best Cellar Press, 1973) Giraffe (Louisiana Press, 1974) Out-of-the-Body Travel (Ecco/Viking, 1977) Summer Celestial (Ecco/Norton, 1983)
Old Heart (W. W. Norton, 2007) Orphan Hours (W. W. Norton, 2012) Against Sunset (W. W. Norton, 2016) Middle Distance (W.W. Norton, 2020)
List of poems
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedBrownfields2013
As editor
Nonfiction
Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (W. W. Norton, 2008) The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner With Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb (W. W. Norton, 2014) Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Sublime (W. W. Norton, 2018)
Honors
Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, 2015Brittany Borghi, "Stanley Plumly receives Truman Capote Award", Iowa Now, July 1, 2015. John William Corrington Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, 2010 Beall Award in Biography from PEN, 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize, 2008 LA Times Book Prize, 2008 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, 1972 Ingram Merrill Foundation Award Pushcart Prize on six occasions Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence
Fellowships Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Ingram-Merrill Fellowship 1973 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship on three occasions 1991 poet in residence at The Frost Place
References
External links Faculty biography maintained by the University of Maryland Stanley Plumly's Profile and a few poems at Academy of American Poets, Poetry.org website "A Conversation with Stanley Plumly", Lisa Meyer, Boston Review
"Bright Stars: Campion’s Film of and from Keats", Poems Out Loud, Stanley Plumly, 10.22.09 Sherry Horowitz "Review of Stanley Plumly's book Old Heart: 'The Crystal Eye: The 'I' as a Prism' 2007