Customer Reviews

Out of Silence

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I am, by no means, a connoisseur of poetry. Yet I have always been fascinated by the intense, insightful, powerful vignettes which Pamela Harrison shares through her poetry.

I picked up Out of Silence the other night, intending to read a poem or two before heading to bed. An hour later, I was still throughly engrossed in this latest collection of poems.

Harrison is a woman of tremendous empathy, and this latest body of work explores a number of topics she must have struggled terribly to come to terms with, many of which are of an intensely personal nature. Yet she rarely shies from the raw truth of the situation and instead meets it head on.

Pamela Harrison shows great courage, because she really opens herself in this latest collection, sharing with us, the readers, some very intimate details of her parents' difficult marriage, her own struggles toward understanding them and her own place in the world, as well as some incredibly poignant portraits of Depression-era folk.

Here were some of Harrison's poems that really caught my attention:
"Beauty" - This story of a young black mother was terrifying.
"Mom Called Him 'Zeke'" - Bittersweet.
"The Measure of Her Means" - Angry. A slow revenge that is all the more devastating.
"Sick Day" - Made me smile, and reminded me of my favorite Shel Silverstein poem "Sick"
"They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait" - Harrison describes a type of woman I am pretty sure is a dying breed. We have a grandmother who ran her house in a similar fashion. I often wonder if she, too, regrets or resents the time and effort, so unappreciated by those who were its beneficiaries.
"Fixity" - I really don't know what to say about this one, other than I marked it because it really touched me.
"My Father's Well" - Always, Harrison paints a vibrant picture of the prairie, and the drought, tying it back to insights about her father.
"Words Deserted" - As a woman and a wife, I found this piece really spoke to me. Once the dust settles from the wedding and honeymoon, a bride and groom begin to settle in and begin to map out their roles, as a couple and as individuals. Here we see the tension, the missteps, the aimless wandering, the struggle to find oneself and also the strength than can come from being part of a union.
"Thaw" - I know the place of which she speaks. Her galoshes make me smile.

I highly recommend this work.

"Out of Silence" is a magnificent culmination of Pamela Harrison's poetic process over the last 40 years. Ms. Harrison departs from the safety of allegory and lyricism to deliver an honest and yet still relatable collection of poetry about her parents's lives.
It is as much an epitaph as it is an elegy.

Out of Silence visits areas such as suicide, substance abuse, loss, grief, recovery, love, and the children who live through these experiences. It is a highly relevant and beautiful collection of poems.

I was excited to read Out of Silence as Okie Chronicles is one of my favorite poetic explorations of the hard-working generations past. Pamela Harrison relates the past in Out of Silence, but in a much more personal way, weaving in family histories and personalities. The topics aren't pretty or fluffy, but this is real life, folks.