Twenty Questions

John recently 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, 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. John has traveled widely, preferring remote, natural settings, and is addicted to kayaking and hiking. His Waypoints (Seattle, Pleasure Boat Studio), a collection of place poems, appeared in 2017. Twenty Questions suggests that a poet is well-served by a journalist's curiosity-the who, what, when, where, why (and how)-so that it is natural that he ask questions. About time, and love, himself, and nature. Once you start, it's hard to stop. After John's Twenty Questions, you'll want to ask your own.