Stanley Plumly was born in 1939 in Barnesville, Ohio, to Herman and Esther Plumly. His father, a Quaker, worked in the lumber industry, and the family lived in the farming regions of Ohio and Virginia. Plumly received his B.A. from Wilmington College, and his M.A. and Ph D. from Ohio University. His first collection of poems, In the Outer Dark, was published in 1970 and was named the winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award by a panel of judges that included Robert Lowell. With literary critic Cleanth Brooks as his mentor, Plumly produced seven acclaimed works in next three decades. Plumly holds the Distinguished University Professorship at the University of Maryland, and his teaching career has spanned forty years at universities including Iowa, Princeton, and Columbia. His next book, due out from W. W. Norton next spring, is work of non-fiction that examines the life and legacy the Romantic poet John Keats. Plumly lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.