American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature 2022
“Susan Brind Morrow defies categorization. She is a classicist, a translator of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a naturalist. Her poetry has the inclusiveness of prose, her prose the precision of poetry. She writes with exceptional beauty about the Finger Lakes region of New York. She also takes us back to the Pyramid Texts and the origins of poetry. This strange constellation is illuminated by her brilliance. She has a deeply personal relationship both with the natural world and the most ancient texts. Everything she writes has the magical quality of the earliest chants and spells.”
“This collection of poems is like no other. Its insights are this-minute fresh, magically rendering the familiar strange to us and the unfamiliar our own. The poems are emotionally accurate and radiant, their imagery enhanced by elegant drawings, In Morrow’s view of the natural world, she rises as high as a kingfisher’s flight and delves as low as what is “under the water where/ weeds don’t grow,” sometimes ranging as far as the Zanzibar.. Her past work as an archeologist, bringing us the secrets of ancient texts, has enriched her new poems of modern love, loss, and discovery.” – Grace Schulman Water
“The two best questions one can ask: need a little help? and what is the name of that bird? – a question Susan Brind Morrow asks often in her gorgeous book of poems and drawings, Water.”- Roger Rosenblatt, A Steinway on the Beach: Wounds and Other Blessings
“One seeks for words worthy of the authenticity and intimacy of this beautiful book. It is a treasury of perceptions, tender and unsparing, of our planetary existence; it possesses a sensual affinity with all that grows, flourishes and dies—conveyed in a clear voice unlike any other.” Wolves and Honey
~Shirley Hazzard
“It is utterly unique … My guess is that anyone half awake to the magic invoked will be blissful for the experiences and the telling of them.” The Names of Things
~William F. Buckley Jr.
“It is so original I could not possibly have thought of it, or anything like it. I have been editing a new edition of the best of Stephen Crane, and the work in some regards is like his.”
The Names of Things
~James Dickey
“The Names of Things is a very rare book, shimmering with spiritual insight, meticulous observation, copious erudition and luminous prose… one’s response after reading it is a kind of mental breathlessness…Every page bears the stamp of a master craftsman; many also reveal the hand of genius.”
~Paul William Roberts, The Toronto Globe and Mail
“It was like a poem, but it was a story. It is so perfectly detailed. Each line in her book was like an artist painting a beautiful landscape picture. She would not only speak like a painter, but also like a scientist in the way she would describe nature. It was so interesting to see the thought process of that painter and scientist mix.” Wolves and Honey
~Long River Review
“This exquisite exploration of natural and linguistic history both straddles and expands the boundaries of memoir, personal essay and eloquent travelogue. In her journeys through Egypt and the Sudan, Morrow blends experience and erudition, uncovering in every chance encounter a wealth of happily synchronous perceptions and associations, always grounded in rigorous scholarship. Reading The Names of Things, we are blessed with the reminder that what Morrow aptly calls the ‘real mystery’ resides not in ‘the old stuff’ but in what is happening in the vividly rendered here and now.”
~Pen Award Nomination