The Loving: Selected Poems

The Loving: Selected Poems by Rena Gerhard brings together her best poems over a period of five decades. These poems reveal her love for Jesus and God. Other topics include dance, family, coming of age in the mid-twentieth century, and inspiration to recover after brain cancer. Most of her poems are short and impactful. Her skill from traditional verse to modern verse is at once insightful, surprising, and relaxed, written with an ease that makes them feel like familiar and welcome friends. Rena’s work has earned the respect of other authors and poets:

It is an honor to read Rena Gerhard’s poems, to touch in after decades with her precision of imagination and her encounters with daily life, laced with the generosity and intimacy of a ＂trembling heart.＂ I love how Gerhard envisions herself standing ＂at the door of a dark night＂ and whistling as ＂the beautiful words come running.＂ Yet she also wrote herself through suffering. She recognized that she would have to ＂look through the hollows between the words.＂ This memorial volume edited by her son, the poet Fred Gerhard, will stand as an enduring achievement.

-Heather H. Thomas, author of Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018)and former editor of Musings, poetry column, Reading Eagle newspaper

As the middle of the Twentieth Century approached, a young woman near Reading, Pennsylvania, took up poetry keenly aware of the thick, heavy glass ceiling hovering over every line she wrote. But write she did, and one could sense in the lines from her poem ＂Night Walk＂

Living through my night walk

She’s sleeping standing up ....

Or in ＂Midnight Forest＂

The silence seems too tense.

One fears to breathe in case one might

Thus doing, cause offense.

that she felt it deeply, but that also saw cracks in the male ceiling already present, cracks that by the 1960s would demolish it, at least in poetry, and provide space for women equally at the forefront of our poets. And though she may not have publicly joined that movement, she quietly kept at it, quietly riding that horse, as she notes in ＂Strange Steed＂

When the wise had gone to bed

To receive their well-earned rest,

Then I watched him as he fed,

And I sat his back, a guest

Instead.

-Rodger Martin, author of The Sleeping Dogs of Lubec, The Nemo Poems: A Martian Perspective, The Blue Moon Series, and For All the Tea in Zhōngguó

Rena Gerhard weaves a tapestry of life’s quiet wonders and profound depths, from the shimmering beauty of nature to the intimate struggles of the human spirit. This collection- captures a lifelong love affair with words, faith, and family, inviting readers to dance through verses that resonate with emotional clarity and timeless grace.

----Peter David Orr, author of Beneath the Surface of Shadow and Light and With the End in Mind

So many people long for that presence, which would keep their loved ones alive forever. We search under afghans, trapse through attics, and roam down long forgotten places for one gem, one picture, or one word that would help us remember. Rena, through her poetry, The Loving - she has remained. Be there for a moment with her, and soon, you too, will be jumping in and enjoying her enchanting dance with words.

-H. Alfke, author of A Smattering: Life, Death, God, and Poetry