Excavation
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Author: Janet Jerve
Review:
“This first collection by Janet Jerve traces and tracks for us the blessed, fraught, and sometimes dangerous path from girlhood to the places where the adult woman finds her solid ground—the place she can stand and survey, with wisdom, all that has made her the woman she is . . . Janet Jerve’s poems are beautifully written, taut and focused, and she offers images that haunt and reveal; she offers a compelling vision of how to live through trauma, how to frame and reframe a life and its meaning. There’s wisdom in these poems, a great sense of unburdening, and powerful examples of language’s role on the path to healing.”
—Deborah Keenan, author of Willow Room,
Green Door, and From Tiger to Prayer
“I sat down to read Excavation and when I looked up at the clock, two hours had flown. With a near-scientific appetite for truth, Janet Jerve leads us through a series of vividly realized glimpses of the unearthing of a horrendous buried trauma and then the difficult emotional work of restoring the joyful potential that was the poet’s birthright.”
—Thomas R. Smith, author of
Waking Before Dawn and The Foot of the Rainbow
"In Excavation, a collection of lyric, narrative, and experimental poems, Janet Jerve investigates the complexity of a woman’s journey though a family history that includes a father who is both nurturing and incestuous. She explores situations of seeing/not seeing by family members and the self. After the father’s death, the woman breaks through her own forgetfulness (the child’s buried memory) and the excavation of the title poem begins . . . These poems are accomplished in craft and form, powerful in feeling."
—Roseann Lloyd, author, of
The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry
About the Author: Janet Jerve grew up near Excelsior, Minnesota. She has taught poetry in Minnesota public schools and worked as a writer/editor for nonprofits. Janet’s poems have appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies. Marilyn Hacker and Alberto Rios selected her as a finalist for the Loft-McKnight Award in poetry in 1989.
Review:
“This first collection by Janet Jerve traces and tracks for us the blessed, fraught, and sometimes dangerous path from girlhood to the places where the adult woman finds her solid ground—the place she can stand and survey, with wisdom, all that has made her the woman she is . . . Janet Jerve’s poems are beautifully written, taut and focused, and she offers images that haunt and reveal; she offers a compelling vision of how to live through trauma, how to frame and reframe a life and its meaning. There’s wisdom in these poems, a great sense of unburdening, and powerful examples of language’s role on the path to healing.”
—Deborah Keenan, author of Willow Room,
Green Door, and From Tiger to Prayer
“I sat down to read Excavation and when I looked up at the clock, two hours had flown. With a near-scientific appetite for truth, Janet Jerve leads us through a series of vividly realized glimpses of the unearthing of a horrendous buried trauma and then the difficult emotional work of restoring the joyful potential that was the poet’s birthright.”
—Thomas R. Smith, author of
Waking Before Dawn and The Foot of the Rainbow
"In Excavation, a collection of lyric, narrative, and experimental poems, Janet Jerve investigates the complexity of a woman’s journey though a family history that includes a father who is both nurturing and incestuous. She explores situations of seeing/not seeing by family members and the self. After the father’s death, the woman breaks through her own forgetfulness (the child’s buried memory) and the excavation of the title poem begins . . . These poems are accomplished in craft and form, powerful in feeling."
—Roseann Lloyd, author, of
The Boy Who Slept Under the Stars: A Memoir in Poetry
About the Author: Janet Jerve grew up near Excelsior, Minnesota. She has taught poetry in Minnesota public schools and worked as a writer/editor for nonprofits. Janet’s poems have appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies. Marilyn Hacker and Alberto Rios selected her as a finalist for the Loft-McKnight Award in poetry in 1989.
