Old Heart
Poems
17 March 2009
Description
A finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize.
In Old Heart, Stanley Plumly confronts and celebrates mortality in all its rich variety—in the detailed natural world at hand, in the immediacy of loss, and in his own personal encounters. Archetypal, sometimes even allegorical, the material and spiritual levels in these poems speak in one voice and seek the common vision of the empathic imagination. This is Plumly's finest book of poetry—a sustained meditation on "old memory, old worry, old matter from the softest tissue deep."
Reviews
"The interplay between words and reality, mortal imagination and the lasting world, shimmers in these poems." — Robert Pinsky, Washington Post
"[Old Heart] contains the lifeblood of song as it defends the crucial endeavor to give each (re)collected moment its living, breathing name." — Georgia Review
"Few poets have sounded so often so comfortable at once with the recollections and strong emotions involved in autobiography, and with attention to a beautiful natural world." — Publishers Weekly
"[Old Heart] addresses, unsentimentally, the odd curtailments of age…a plain-spoken meditation and response that blends seamlessly the physical world and felt emotion." — Library Journal
Awards
Shortlisted — National Book Award, 2007
Winner — Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 2007
Winner — Paterson Poetry Prize, 2008
Also By: Stanley Plumly 
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