Okie Chronicles, Poems by Pamela Harrison

The chorus of voices, at once tough and intimate, that sing the poems of this collection tell a multi- generational story of family life in Oklahoma. Pamela Harrison’s Okie Chronicles is a memorable portrait of life enduring, and triumphing, in hard country.

Sample Poems by Pamela Harrison

“In the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, Okies traveled west away from hopelessness. Here we see the second and third generations, man woman and child, poem  by poem, in hard times but also beautiful in the illuminated detail that is the work of poetry.”—Grace Paley

"Writing in lines as tough, supple, and capable of heart- breaking grace as the lives of her characters, Pamela Harrison locates poetry where few in postmodern American culture seem to believe, or acknowledge, it existed: the working-class Southwest, specifically Ferlin Husky’s Oklahoma. What in contemporary poetry could be more unfashionable than the lyric embrace of men and women formerly known to us only in the stereotypes of bad movies and truck commercials? Okie Chronicles is a history of a people and of a place, but it is also poetry of a high order, as artfully nuanced and evocative as it is intellectually complex.” —B.H. Fairchild

Pamela Harrison is the granddaughter of settlers who participated in the 1889 Land Run. A graduate of Smith College and the Vermont College MFA Program in Writing, she won the PEN New England North Discovery Poet Award in 2002. Her first book, Stereopticon, was published by David Robert Books in 2004. Ms. Harrison lives with her husband in Norwich, Vermont.

ISBN 1932339876, 100 pages

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