Filing Order by John Delaney

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