In 1993, Gary Geddes travelled through Israel and Palestine with the blind poet and scholar John Asfour. The contrast between his friend's ability in the sighted world and his own incompetence in Asfour's Arabic world forced him to ponder the blindness that is so much a part of the human condition.

Flying Blind, Geddes's sixteenth poetry collection, meditates on sight and insight, on personal and political loss. The sequence "Flying Blind," which focuses on Geddes's eye-opening trip, is complemented by prize-winning poems celebrating the wintry rockface of eastern Ontario, domestic fortitude in Australia, and fine discriminations of conduct in Japan.