Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra.
Language is fossil poetry.
Trained as a classicist, Morrow first went to dig up axheads in the Western Desert in 1980. She takes us on that ferry to Sudan, on soldier-haunted drives around the desert and to a soothsayer's home in Cairo. Yet the heart of her book is an inner quest as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life and loves by observing the natural wonders around her. She learns how stars and flowers were defined with the same Coptic words, and exchanges poems with wise, sand-hardened guides. In that regard, it is a perfect mirror of her book.