Filing Order

Though only a few of these poems are standard sonnets, I have been intrigued to experiment within their fourteen lines, sometimes with rhyme and a variety of structures, while still maintaining their strong (to me) argumentative, metaphorical nature. The form allows me to succinctly salvage people, places, things, and thoughts that are the heart of all poetry but are distinctly mine-without sacrificing their emotional importance and impact. Read each "Poem as Map." From "Newborn" to "Cremation", from crossing the "Continental Divide" to straddling the hemispheres "At the Equator", from "When I Grow Up (Since You Asked)" to "Riding an E-Bike at Seventy", the poems in Filing Order cover the spectrum of time and place. They acknowledge we all have "Breaking Points" and "So Much Sadness/Sorrow Coming." They recommend reading a "Selected Bibliography" and taking in "Scenic Views." I ask the reader "Let Me Tell You What I Think". Say yes, okay. Listen "To the End" "And that is how I spent my life with you. / The years were fledgling songbirds; then they flew."

About the Author :
John Delaney retired after 35 years in the Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University Library, where he was head of manuscripts processing and then, for his last 15 years, curator of historic maps. He has written a number of works on cartography, including Strait Through: Magellan to Cook and the Pacific; First X, Then Y, Now Z: An Introduction to Landmark Thematic Maps; and Nova Caesarea: A Cartographic Record of the Garden State, 1666-1888. These have extensive website versions.He has written poems for most of his life, and, in the 1970s, he attended the Writing Program of Syracuse University, where his mentors were poets W. D. Snodgrass and Philip Booth. No doubt, in subtle ways, they have bookended his approach to poems. His publications include Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, Galápagos (2023), a collaborative chapbook of his son Andrew's photographs and his poems, and Nile (2024), a chapbook of poems and photographs about Egypt. He lives in Port Townsend, WA.

Review :
John Delaney knows how to organise a poem around an idea and develop it structurally within the small compass of a sonnet's 14 lines. Not many poets today seem to be able to do that. Once you open this book, his poems of memory and family, time, loss and hope, will surely draw you in as they drew me in, and you will go on reading. -John Fuller, English poet, Oxford professor, author of The Sonnet, editor of The Oxford Book of Sonnets John Delaney is talking to you. You should listen. In Filing Order you'll see the world through the eyes of animals, a penguin family, several dogs, absent parents (and their vacation slides.) These all-short poems are the perfect size if you're out of time (or simply impatient). There's nothing longer than a page (with the exception of the multi-part Newborn-but you have to give babies some leeway). But don't let their brevity distract you. Each has a weight to it. John could teach a master class in how to end a poem to leave the reader wondering if they're still breathing. It's all in here... life changes, death, divorce, downsizing. There's a personal nostalgia that lands squarely in our universal experience. Read these poems before time slaughters you too. Filing Order is the evidence that John Delaney was here. It's irrefutable. -Rick Lupert, poet, author of It's Spritz O'Clock Somewhere and God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion, proprietor of PoetrySuperHighway.com