Into the Okavango: The Africa Poems and Photographs

Come take an African safari with us. Into the Okavango: The Africa Poems and Photographs is a 216-page, 92-poem, 500-photograph, 12 x 13 inch coffee-table book on Africa's animals, taking the reader on two journeys. The first is twenty-three days of safaris through Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, detailing first encounters with elephants, cheetahs, lions, leopards, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and more. The photographers feature Victoria Falls and Cape Point by helicopter. As the safaris get more dangerous, the camps more remote, the poet embarks on a descent to the sad, painful places of her soul not often visited. The book, then, invites its readers to take a darker, shadow journey as well. Rounding Cape Point by helicopter proves to be a triumphant catharsis for the poet. "I was born wanting to go to Africa," she writes. By her first evening there, she is already in harmony: "Later, by the campfire, the Cimmerian night, without lights from any city nearby, touched the sand. I felt a chill. In this hemisphere, the sky turned on itself; Scorpius had overthrown Orion. We were told we could not walk back to our tent unaccompanied by a guide. 'Hyenas,' Phineas said, 'come into camp this late,' and I knew only few men go flaming, forbidden into the Okavango." Exquisitely photographed, Into the Okavango is organized by individual safari camps, featuring a bleeder page and two-page spread for each camp, 4 x 6 photographs on verso pages set up as a photo album, and large photographs on recto pages, which feature close-ups of the animals.Marianne Harding Burgoyne is the author of 'Into the Okavango: The Africa Poems and Photographs', published 2005 under ISBN 9780974218304 and ISBN 0974218308.