Review: “Beach” by Stanley Plumly

Reviewed on 10/24/2025

★★★★★

“Beach” recounts life and death with melancholy and appreciation. The speaker imagines his life’s end at a beach, where “sea, spume, the air” turned to the same. He imagines the melting of human and nature, like “dust to dust, earth to earth,” a return into the cosmic consciousness. Similar to most poems on death, Plumly addresses his departure with peace, while also imbuing surreal elements. He grants imageries the complexion of an oil painting: “luminous oyster white” and “the edge-of-the-ocean blue light.” In the speaker’s solitude, a temporary vision of a human appears, “someone walking toward/ me.” Then, he realizes it’s only an illusion, “as it/ should be.” The speaker stays in an absolute tranquility, stripped of love and fear, only bearing a present mindfulness. 

In this terminal moment, when everything walks towards the edge of darkness (“the/ white sun has almost dropped under the soft gray almost stillness of/ the water.”), Plumly is once again filled with the desire to live. He illuminates how contemplations of death can remind us of our love for life. Stylistically, Plumply uses long lines, drawing us to extend our breath. This adds to the poem’s dream core, where the speaker walks around us like a wandering spirit, singing a nomadic song.

Full Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1690379/beach#tab-author