Stanley Plumly

I saw an obituary for the poet Stanley Plumly.
I have never read one of his poems.
His work is "not in my field"--loathsome concept.

When I taught at a college in Texas, grad student and friend VC (who was about 45--so 15 years ahead of me) took me to a poetry reading. She had owned a bookstore before returning to school.
SP was a handsome and distinguished fellow. Perhaps he taught at University of Houston at the time.
VC sat next to me with tears running down her face.
It turned out that she--smart, beautiful, and wealthy, though troubled--had had a brief affair with SP. He had spurned her.

That was 35 years ago. VC is close to 80. If we passed in an airport (I have met several people from the past in airports), we would not recognize each other.

I just read a few poems by Stanley Plumly. And a few by one of his wives, who jumped off a building at UMass, dying at 59.

I would like to read his work on Keats. Will I find the time?

Perhaps I should retire.

Infidelity

The two-toned Olds swinging sideways out of
the drive, the bone-white gravel kicked up in
a shot, my mother in the deathseat half

out the door, the door half shut--she’s being
pushed or wants to jump, I don’t remember.
The Olds is two kinds of green, hand-painted,
and blows black smoke like a coal-oil fire. I’m
stunned and feel a wind, like a machine, pass
through me, through my heart and mouth; I’m standing
in a field not fifty feet away, the
wheel of the wind closing the distance.
Then suddenly the car stops and my mother
falls with nothing, nothing to break the fall . . .

One of those moments we give too much to,
like the moment of acknowledgment of
betrayal, when the one who’s faithless has
nothing more to say and the silence is
terrifying since you must choose between
one or the other emptiness. I know
my mother’s face was covered black with blood
and that when she rose she too said nothing.
Language is a darkness pulled out of us.
But I screamed that day she was almost killed,
whether I wept or ran or threw a stone,
or stood stone-still, choosing at last between
parents, one of whom was driving away.

Infidelity

Stanley Plumly, 1939 - 2019

The two-toned Olds swinging sideways out of
the drive, the bone-white gravel kicked up in
a shot, my mother in the deathseat half

out the door, the door half shut--she's being
pushed or wants to jump, I don't remember.
The Olds is two kinds of green, hand-painted,
and blows black smoke like a coal-oil fire. I'm
stunned and feel a wind, like a machine, pass
through me, through my heart and mouth; I'm standing
in a field not fifty feet away, the
wheel of the wind closing the distance.
Then suddenly the car stops and my mother
falls with nothing, nothing to break the fall . . .

One of those moments we give too much to,
like the moment of acknowledgment of
betrayal, when the one who's faithless has
nothing more to say and the silence is
terrifying since you must choose between
one or the other emptiness. I know
my mother's face was covered black with blood
and that when she rose she too said nothing.
Language is a darkness pulled out of us.
But I screamed that day she was almost killed,
whether I wept or ran or threw a stone,
or stood stone-still, choosing at last between
parents, one of whom was driving away.

From Boy on the Step by Stanley Plumly. Copyright © 1989 by Stanley Plumly. Reprinted by permission of The Ecco Press.