Excavations

"Balancing the controlled tension that binds each poem, the living amongst the dead, the city standing and the city 'amid the dust of balconies cascading down on the heads of passers-by,' this poet's voice is like the song of high priestess, a truthfulness that fills the room. Jennifer Pournelle's poems form a body of work that has at its core the beating of an enormous heart, a beautiful heart."—Charlene Spearen, author of A Book of Exquisite Disasters and associate director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative

"The excavations that take place in this book are literal and metaphorical. As the speaker moves through Europe, the Middle East, and the American Southwest, she's undertaking a serious study of the brick and mortar composition of cities such as Vienna, Berlin, San Diego, and Baghdad. But each city is, as the speaker notes, 'a city within a city,' that is, a story within a story, the layers of which come to light as the speaker soaks up each environment—its textures, its temperatures, its temperaments—its past offenses, its present troubles, and its future possibilities."—Rigoberto Gonzalez, author of Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, from the foreword

Winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize