Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: prose

  • Songs from Fern’s Pond

    Songs from Fern’s Pond

    Composing a Life with Courage, Gratitude, and Joy

    In the Prologue to Songs from Fern’s Pond, Sheryl Pothier Harmer opens a sensitive and celebratory tribute with the beautiful sentence, ‘Her name was Fern and she was my mother.’ She was a remarkable woman.

    Fern was born in 1913 to a family who were like many at the time, just scraping by, she putting herself through nursing school, married and raised four children.

    After thirty-three years of happy married life, her husband Oscar passed away, leaving her bereft, but also realising she now had time to begin again for the final chapters of her life.

    She sold the family home and bought a piece land where she established the home of her dreams and began a new life in a new community, one where she grew her own vegetables, raised chickens, developed her passion for art and weaving, wrote avidly to family and friends of her life and the many fascinating and challenging things of her daily existence.

    Songs from Ferns Pond is a collection of poetry written by Sheryl often in reply to a letter from her mother or simply as a means of expressing the deep love she had for a remarkable and forthright woman; her mother.

    As the many stories unfold telling a story of renewal and rebirth, the simple joy in spending time at the edge of the pond with the ducks, the challenge of creating the stained glasswork for a new door and the love of community that developed over the 14 years she lived on the banks of the Snake River

    The final chapter of her rich and well lived life is played out in a somewhat prosaic manner in the final letters written to family, followed by the tragedy of a devastating fire, with December finally seeing new life retuning to Fern’s Pond; ducks returning, and the hope that the seeds falling into the almost frozen earth will once again blossom in the Spring weather.

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

  • A Kinder Sea

    A Kinder Sea

    Poetry is of its very nature an intensely person collection of thoughts, images, emotions; the telling of stories with a myriad of words each one used in a very different manner or style. Long poetry, short poetry, prose all delivering a message.

    Felicity Plunkett has released her second anthology of poetry, A Kinder Sea, some seven years in the making, with a title that is as disarming as the poetry contained within the pages. The immediate image that comes to mind it that of works relating to the sea, which is indeed the case, but what is the metaphor or is there a metaphor that is being constructed: is it the sea, the oceans of the world, a majestic world of wonderment, turbulence and danger or the ebb and flow of life as it is lived; of love, or enchantment of desire and heartbreak.

    A mother’s pride in her son, full of rich emotion, has been beautifully crafted in the first piece Sound Bridge, a celebration of her son singing the Lachrymose with one hundred Moravian choristers; a piece transcribed by Mozart but left unfinished. The emotional line ‘Lachrymose dies ill: all day grief’s weft across joy’s warp’ is majestic in perfection.

    Blood days: Monochords is stunning in its simplicity; in the minimalist style of delivery. Black and white, no distraction, just the words on the page. Use them as you wish, place your own interpretation on them, allow them to circulate within the mind, the imagination, enjoy the power of a simple, unadorned word.

    These are just two of the many, many pieces that capture the intellect, the imagination and the emotion. With many of pieces the feelings have been stripped bare. Sumptuous in their interrelationship of emotion, counteracted with an almost clinical apathy which could be considered as a juxtaposition for thought.

    A Kinder Sea is a diverse body of modern poetry which should be considered as selective reading with wide appeal, but definitely considered as an anthology that needs to be savoured piece by piece.

  • Tell it to the Dog: a memoir of sorts

    Tell it to the Dog: a memoir of sorts

    The author suggests this book is a sort of memoir of his life. Recently he has purchased a small dog from the dog’s home and has begun to tell it about life and living. The reason for this is that Robert was working in Lhasa when an old man told him that not only would he be reincarnated, but his dog would come back as a human. Robert feels that the dog needs to be prepared for anything and so this is his way of reviewing his own life and hopefully helping the dog adjust when in human form.

     This is indeed a memoir of the author’s life, but written very interestingly and captivatingly. The whole story is composed of many short chapters, just enough in the chapter to express an idea, a remembrance or a thought. It begins with the thoughts of being nursed by his grandmother and feeling safe in her arms. His family move from Dublin to London and from there, around the world.

     Many of the chapters, not more than half a page, deal with the author’s family, but then they begin to follow his journey in London, then overseas. Some chapter recount what Robert sees, some chapters deal with the affairs of the time, and some chapters tell of people he has met.

     Bit by bit, while piecing together, and gleaning more details of this man, we begin to fully understand his life. We get to know why he feels so strongly about issues, and why he reacts to things the way he does. Rather than beginning his life story in a sequential way, the chapters almost seem like random thoughts, which become more understandable as the book progresses. The characters he introduces to us become fleshed out gradually, and his responses make more sense.

      A most unusual and introspective memoir indeed!