PRODUKTBESCHREIBUNG
by Jennifer R. Pournelle (Author), Rigoberto Gonzalez (Foreword by)
Selected by Rigoberto Gonzales as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Excavations: A City Cycle is the first collection of poetry from Jennifer R. Pournelle. Set in different cities over fifteen years of peace and war, the collection explores the hidden similarities of these locations' seemingly different landscapes and cultures. She begins in Vienna with the destruction of Saint Michael's Square, then to a reunified Berlin, and from there to the Spanish influenced San Diego, ending in the midst of the religious conflicts of Baghdad. Through vivid explorations of place, Pournelle's narratives bring to the surface defining historical events from these sites and their host cultures as the poems reveal how events rooted in these locations ripple outward to affect the world beyond. A career soldier turned environmental anthropologist and archeologist, Pournelle is deeply attuned to visions of loss and destruction as well as the promise of rebirth and rediscovery. Her poems voice her individual experiences abroad as she sifts--literally and metaphorically--through layers of turbulent history and harsh present circumstances in search of some small promise of future recovery for all that has been lost.
Front Jacket
Poems unearthing the strata of human conflict and hope burried across time and place
Back Jacket
Poems unearthing the strata of human conflict and hope burried across time and place
Author Biography
Jennifer R. Pournelle has lived in ten states and eight countries. She received her doctorate in anthropology and archaeology from the University of California-San Diego. After leaving the U.S. Army, she spent time as a professional editor before embarking on her current career as an environmental anthropologist and archaeologist. Her poems have appeared in Parnassus Literary Journal and Minerva. She lives with her partner in Columbia, South Carolina, where Pournelle is a research assistant professor with the University of South Carolina School of the Environment.
