Reviews of
Songs from Fern’s Pond

Add your own review at GoodReads!

“A beautifully impressionistic weaving of anecdotes, poetry, and personal letters, and an ode to the seasons of a year, of a life, and of a lineage. Harmer has created, in her mother, Fern, a richly unforgettable protagonist and matriarch. As the weaving continues, much like with her own baskets, the warp and weft of Fern’s life becomes ever more discernible. And readers will find, in the end, that it is in the interspersal of the rough and the smooth, the ordinary and the bold that makes the finished product one of such unique and memorable beauty. If what they say is true: that life is a work of art and we must all endeavor to remain its artist, we could do worse than follow in the path of Fern, who met the rough and the smooth with good cheer and never ceased living her life with generosity and intention.”

—Alexandra A. Chan, author of In the Garden Behind the Moon 

∞

“How privileged we are to see a life through another’s eyes… a life we would have never known, never crossed paths with if not for Sheryl Pothier Harmer’s Songs from Fern’s Pond.  In this collection, Harmer intersperses poems depicting the life of Fern—a hard-working woman full of love and grit—with actual letters the author and family received from Fern throughout her life.  Some are very slice-of-life, some will make you chuckle, but they all tell a story. Put together, Harmer illustrates beautifully through these poems and letters how the seasons of our life change, how the world as we know it is here for a time then gone, how it takes every single moment to truly live a life. Songs from Fern’s Pond so eloquently takes us out of our own lives and puts us into hers. It’s sure to leave a legacy on the hearts of readers for years to come. Which, I feel confident, is how Fern would have intended.”

— Amber Showalter, poet and author of Death Will Be Our Curfew 

∞

“Songs from Fern’s Pond is a most eloquent tribute from a daughter to her beloved mother and is an absolute joy to read”

— Jan, Goodreads reviewer

∞

"With lyrical prose and deep emotional insight, Sheryl paints a vivid picture of her mother's resilience, quiet strength, and the profound love that transcends the confines of time and place... From gardening, to basketweaving, to nursing, Fern leads a purposeful life and manages to make you laugh and cry. A love story from daughter to mother, this book is food for the soul.”

— Toni, Goodreads reviewer

∞

"Songs from Fern's Pond captures the beauty of nature and simplistic living. Through a heartfelt collection of poetry, letters, and prose you experience Fern’s journey. The collection explores themes of resilience, family, and embracing new beginnings. Everything about songs from Fern's Pond was beautiful and had so much emotional depth.”

— Nikki, Goodreads reviewer

∞

“It reads like a adulation or homage to spring, to nature, to Fern's home. I found them all so beautiful. This is a short read, but it packs so much human emotion and depth of moments in its short pages. I can feel how much respect Fern's family had for her, how much love she had for her home and her life. Oh, to be cared for so much by others! A gift in writing.”

— Kristy, Goodreads reviewer

∞

Songs from Fern’s Pond details the life of Sheryl Pothier Harmer’s mother Fern, who was born in 1913 in rural Oregon into poverty, but led a rich life filled with laughter, love, and family. Harmer’s mother was an artist, a weaver, and a woman forced to reinvent herself at the age of sixty-one when her long-term husband and love of her life Oscar passed away. She created the world of her dreams both before and after she died, serving as an inspiration first for her close family and now, thankfully, for readers facing their own elder years wondering about the possibilities remaining for building a positive, revised life.

The first question readers might have is: why should a relatively unknown mother’s life be of interest? The answer lies in Fern’s personality and vibrant attitude, which influenced generations of her family and those whose lives they undoubtedly touched:

My mother inspired me to live fully and optimistically. She taught that every life has obstacles and opportunities to see oneself as either a victim or as a participant in creatively navigating a new path. Using a lifetime of problem-solving skills, sheer grit, and good humor, she learned her way through each new challenge.

Another attraction lies in the makeup of Fern’s story, which is not just a collage of connections between mother and daughter, but a dance of relationship- and life-building skills. These are vivid expressions juxtaposing mother and daughter’s writings and reflections.

Songs from Fern’s Pond contains the essence of not just surviving, but thriving. Herein lie the keys to adaptation, positivity, and joy that readers can easily learn from.

Poems and prose add observations of nature and self to this dance. One example lies in the poem “Beauty in the Blight”:

Do not look for perfection.
There is beauty in the blight—
badges of resilience;
stories told in scars.

Another powerful example lies in the running thread of memoir that captures Fern’s life, filling in details about her emotions and choices:

Something stirred within her—a longing to embrace the forlorn land; to wrap her arms around it, gather it in, nurture it, and bring life into its dry and neglected soil. Maybe it was a connection to her childhood, or maybe it was the nurse in her with an instinct to care and soothe and heal. Whatever it was, she sensed both a familiarity and a wild calling of new possibilities as she breathed in the clear air and surveyed the landscape.

Libraries can call it a memoir, an artist’s journey, a celebration of nature, a learning opportunity that supports ongoing life education, or an uplifting story of adaptation and joy, as they will, as they recommend it to patrons from all walks of life.

One thing is evident: Songs from Fern’s Pond provides an uplifting example of how life weaves together circumstances that rest on individuals to interpret as either opportunities or adversity. The clues to “how” lies in Fern’s story, which is highly recommended for a wide audience seeking joy and purpose in their own aging lives. Songs from Fern’s Pond also will provoke uplifting discussions of values and resilience among groups ranging from book clubs to psychology circles and those facing their own aging.

— Midwest Book Review, March 2025

∞

The skillful poems of Songs from Fern’s Pond explore loss, family, and the power of human will.

Sheryl Pothier Harmer’s Songs from Fern’s Pond is a stirring poetic tribute to her mother, who staked out a solitary, hardscrabble existence on the far western frontier. A self-described “collage,” the book collects Harmer’s memories of her mother, Fern, in the last decades of her life. Its “snapshot” poems are interspersed with short narratives and excerpts from Fern’s letters to family members and neighbors, shared in linear order. Following the death of her lifelong partner in the 1970s, Fern bought a plot of land near a natural spring in an unforgiving stretch of the south Idaho desert. Under Fern’s tutelage, the arid land became a fertile homestead, replete with a dizzying variety of vegetables, farm animals, and homespun crafts. The poems— written from Fern’s perspective—capture the thrills of this solitary frontier life. As the years roll on, their joy is shot through with a creeping sense of loneliness. The poetic narrative continues through Fern’s failing health and her family’s eventual inheritance of the home, culminating in a tragic electrical re that reduces Fern’s long-standing creation back to a state of wildness.

The poems have a novelistic bent, balancing psychological insights with detailed worldbuilding. The opening to “Collections,” a poem about Fern’s extensive collection of ephemera, is one example:

From scarcity came a compulsion to collect—

assembling a collage of a life
in all its longed-for fullness
creating an archive of stories
that were never told—

This emphasis on “untold stories” is one of the collection’s reigning motifs. Its poems concentrate on silent, inward moments of Fern’s life rather than on her family’s public celebrations. With this focus on interiority, the collection reflects the extreme solitude of Fern’s life and occasional intrusions of melancholy.

Written in irregular meter, the poems reflect sound rhythmic judgment. Line breaks arrive at natural pauses, with only rare examples of awkward enjambments. Expressive free verse shapes Fern Pond’s ecological splendors on the page. Dramatic escarpments, expansive plateaus, and fragrant vineyards are captured in long litanies made up of tight, controlled stanzas:

So, she goes out among the moonlit rows
where late-August grapes
hang heavy on the vine,
their swollen fruits
and tendrils hiding
deep among the shadows.

Quick bursts of natural descriptions result in powerful moments, though some are over reliant on easy metaphorical connections, as with repeated references to early buds of spring and the idea of “rebirth.” Nonetheless, the poems evoke the careful attentiveness of famed ecologists, with nature made to mingle with human dramas throughout.

Blending elements of memorialization with nature writing, Songs from Fern’s Pond is a poetry collection that explores loss, family, and the power of human will.

— Isaac Randel, Foreword Clarion Reviews