After a diagnosis of cancer, acclaimed poet Stanley Plumly found himself in the middle distance—looking back at his childhood in Ohio and a rich lifetime of family and friends, while gazing into a future shaped by the press of mortality.

In Middle Distance, his final collection, he pushed onward into new territory in extended hybrid forms and revelatory prose pieces. Blending documentary and memoir with his signature Keatsian lyricism, he contemplated at every turn the horizons of his life.

From “White Rhino”
How long a life is too long,
as I take my time from here to there, the one world
dried- out distances, nose, horn, my great head lifted down,
the tonnage of my heart almost more than I can carry . . .