Expecting Delays

As the title poem suggests, delays arrive exclusively on a personal level. (Not that some collective surface hasn't been scratched; it has, but that surface is relatively inconsequential.) We must follow such scars; it's who we are. This volume begins and ends just beyond the delays, far enough outside our souls to allow us to discover new ways to return. As these poems insist, the return is crucial. Bishop describes a few of his own reappearances, hopeful that the unusable track he leaves behind might remind readers of a few of their own delays and how their own expectations have been transfigured. Hidden among the ordinary images, Bishop carefully places a pair of eyes that, if engaged, assure readers a most unusual journey.