Stanley Plumly will give the Turnbull Poetry Lecture this evening at 6:30 pm in Mudd Hall. The current Poet Laureate of Maryland, Plumly is on the faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park.
Plumly’s poetry is populated with the denizens of a natural world that intersects with human life but also leads us outside of it for a moment—to see or be what he called in an interview “the larger figure outlining the smaller figure.” Crows guide him towards a memory of his mother’s hands; stray dogs reveal the rural economy of life and death; blue jays mark his passage through time; a repertoire of broken trees makes him acknowledge that “Doctoring, then witchery, then/love—nothing we tried would work.”
Library resources give you access to Stanley Plumly’s work in print and online.
Plumly has said, “For me it’s not possible to live in the enclosure—and claustrophobia—of a completely imagined world.” That sounds to me like an invitation to slip off the skin of the known. Come hear Stanley Plumly speak tonight, to find out where he might take you.
Rats, guys! I would totally have come to this if I had known about it earlier. Poetry out loud is the best.