Gobi Dream: Poems and Photographs by John Delaney

Paper, Color

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This title will be released on August 21, 2026

Land-locked, democratic Mongolia, sandwiched between two authoritarian superpowers (Russia and China), is a marvel, rich in history, culture, and natural beauty. This land of Genghis Khan still features herding nomads—of horses, cows, sheep, goats, camels, and yaks. Clearly, I was unprepared, and so will you be, as you follow my travel in that wonderful country.

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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 the last 15 years, also curator of historic maps. He’s 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’s been writing poems for most of his life, and, in the 1970s, attended the Writing Program of Syracuse University, where his mentors were poets W. D. Snodgrass and Philip Booth. In subtle ways, they have bookended his approach to poems. In 2017, John published Waypoints, a collection of place poems. Twenty Questions, a chapbook, appeared in 2019, and Filing Order: Sonnets and CATechisms, poems and photographs about his senior cat, came out in 2025. In addition, John has published a number of “poetic travel guides” based on his trips, often preferring remote, natural settings: Delicate Arch: Poems and Photographs of National Parks and Monuments (2022), Galápagos (2023), consisting of his son’s color photographs and John’s poetic responses, Nile (2024), poems and photographs about Egypt, and poems and photographs about Morocco (2026). He makes his home in Port Townsend, WA.