On Stanley Plumly's Poems [with Response

Abstract

The landscape of Stanley Plumly's poems is landscape of in or at edge of sleep, which is a kind of death, of at edge of death, which is a kind of sleep. The word body occurs six times in these three poems. The is something to be escaped from, to be understood, and, perhaps, to be recalled from dark which has risen around it. Dreamsong, most explicit escape occurs. (I want to look at poem without reference to Berryman.) The speaker says, wanted to die. He feels trapped in the cradle of myself cannot do what he wants until allows it. Then I rose walked water. The escape from is associated with water, with the dark side rising. These are key elements in Plumly's other poems. As one rises from walks water in death, so one floats to water's surface, amid debris of death, in sleep. In Sleep can be read two ways: as literal death called sleep by terms of metaphor, which is less interesting way?or as a dream-sleep that puts one in contact with death. other words, our imagined death, fact that we can do imagine it, is death that really counts in our lives. The escape here occurs when you begin to open all your body, bob, with both hands wipe water clear. With opened at last, you begin to see what it was. The poem moves from drowning water toward clear silence of outer space where parents sister and one wife, one wife, one wife drift like birds. The is still tied but in there is escape illumination.