Click here to purchase Drifting to "Hello"

Drifting to "Hello" (Khotso Publishing, 2023) is Fred Gerhard's first full-length poetry book. 

Cover artwork: "Cape Cod Sunset" by Sophia Januszewski.

Praise for Drifting to “Hello”

“…  from lucid and conversational free verse to skillful and musical rhyme. He crafts memorable lines and indelible images…” —Simon Hunt, author of Lesser Magi and Endlings

“These poems tap gently at our door and invite us to join the dance of dandelions and red catkins, bobcats and trolleys, of life and death and love.” —Barbara Morrison, author of Terrarium, Here at Least, and Innocent

“In Fred’s poetry, there is a magical sense of loss, and light … that envelops the reader in something mystical.” —Kirk Lawrence-Howard, BespokeVocals.com 

“Beautiful, touching, and heartwarming ... an enchanting read.” —Melissa Dorval, author of the novel When You Lose Control

"We are the lucky ones who get to experience his many loves through his poems." —Kevin Scott Hall, songwriter and author of A Quarter Inch From My Heart and Off the Charts!

The Loving: Selected Poems 

by Rena Gerhard

Click here to purchase The Loving: Selected Poems by Rena Gerhard

The Loving: Selected Poems (Petronella Press, 2025) features the poetry of Fred Gerhard's mother, Rena Gerhard. This posthumous collection is edited with a Foreword by Fred Gerhard.

Praise for The Loving: Selected Poems

“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…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

“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

“Rena, through her poetry, The Loving, 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